


Ryuu no Noroi

by primalrage



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bickering, But who knows what canon will be when Overwatch 2 comes out, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Curses, Dragon Hanzo Shimada, Fairy Tale Curses, Falling In Love, Family Bonding, Family Reunions, Hanamura (Overwatch), Japan, Japanese Culture, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Overwatch Recall, Redemption, Shimada Brothers, Soulmates, Touch-Starved, mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 72,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24920746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primalrage/pseuds/primalrage
Summary: On a stolen motorcycle, Jesse McCree flees the scene of the train robbery and the ghosts of his past, ignoring the call back to Overwatch. Genji Shimada has kept tabs on his brother Hanzo ever since their reunion that spring, but when Hanzo disappears without a trace, Genji enlists his old Blackwatch partner McCree to help look for him. McCree travels across Japan, following the clues surrounding Hanzo's disappearance, until he comes across one big problem. Big. Really big. Like... dragon-sized.Takes place immediately following McCree's Reunion short and up to the Overwatch 2 reveal short.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 470
Kudos: 478





	1. Broken-Down Gunslinger

Jesse McCree pushed the motorcycle to its limit across the barren expanse of highway. The wind in his face, cold and sharp enough to hurt, kept him awake, but his body ached for sleep. He wanted to get as far from the train and Route 66 as possible, but he was not a young man anymore. Being on the run for so long, the encounter with Ashe and the Deadlock Gang, and even the short reunion with Echo had all drained him. The sight of so many familiar faces had stirred up emotions that were proving difficult to process. He would be glad for the loss of consciousness when his head finally hit a pillow, wherever that pillow might be.

This part of the country had been so reclaimed by the wild that it was nearly a wasteland. People had fled the southwest for larger cities with more industry, where they found jobs and, in some cases, even success. Here, the most that people could hope for was survival. McCree passed abandoned exit after abandoned exit, until he saw the first hint of life – a building lit up against the empty night. It was a bar attached to an old motel. McCree turned into the parking lot, which was empty but for a row of bikes up front and one lone semi-truck. All the neon beer signs bled their colors into the darkness, and he could hear the twang of loud music from inside over the purr of the machine between his legs. This wasn't a glamorous place, but he wasn't a glamorous man. Hot food and a bed was a lot more than he had for comfort on some nights.

He turned the bike off and stood, stretching his back until his spine gave a satisfying _pop_ back into place. A pair of men, leaning by the door and smoking cigarettes, watched him with casual disinterest. McCree was a stranger, but seeing his attire and his bike, they were put at ease. McCree nodded in their direction, receiving nods in return. He stopped to light up a cigar, hovering far away enough from the pair of smokers not to intrude, but close enough to still appear friendly.

“Nice bike,” one grunted.

“It's a friend's,” McCree said.

That opened the door for a few more casual questions, which McCree effortlessly lied in response to, before a companionable silence settled between them. _Well_ , near-silence - classic rock leaked out of the bar behind them, and many raised voices could be heard over the squealing guitar. McCree always felt so removed from normal people, as though they were a different species entirely. They had never fought to save the world. They had never risked their lives for strangers. Never known men like Gabriel Reyes or women like Ana Amari, never been heralded as a hero, never suffered such a fall from grace as his own. He envied these men and their common, every-day lives with their common, every-day problems.

After smoking his cigar to a nub and stomping it out in the dirt beneath a boot, he nodded to the men and headed inside. It was dim, the bar lit by more of those neon signs that had glowed so sickly outside, and the stench of tobacco and sour liquor was overwhelming. A television on the far wall played last week's old football game that no one paid attention to. Some men were gathered around a pool table, but barely seemed to be playing. Most patrons were crowded around the bar, where their voices were raised to be heard over the blaring jukebox. McCree received glances as he walked in, but he seemed to pass some unspoken test, because after that no one bothered with him.

At the far corner of the bar, McCree found an empty seat he was able to squeeze into, and he took his hat off, setting it on the counter beside him. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair. He wanted food, a shower, and a bed. Preferably in that order, although he wasn't going to be picky. The smell of something frying wafted through the swinging doors to the kitchen, and it made his stomach lurch with excitement. It had been nine or ten hours, he'd guess, since the coffee and unfinished slice of pie he'd had at the Panorama Diner. His body was used to going without, but that was a long stretch even for him.

The bartender was busy with the other patrons, but McCree managed to wave her over. She was younger than him, her arms covered from wrist to elbows in tattoos, and there was something striking about each part of her that failed to add up to something truly pretty as a whole. When he smiled at her, though, her face absolutely lit up.

 _Still got it, Jesse,_ he thought to himself, and he ordered both a water and a beer, just picking one at random from the tap. When she brought both glasses over, he downed the water in one long swill.

“Damn, you was thirsty,” she teased him, “Need a refill?”

He shook his head and wrapped his hands around the frosted glass of beer. “What's yer favorite thing on the menu?” he asked.

“I mean, this ain't no five star restaurant,” she laughed.

“You're a real saleswoman, aintcha?”

She grinned and shrugged. “The buffalo wings are good if you get them extra crispy.”

So that's exactly what he ordered.

While he waited for his food, he tried to pretend he was a normal man just passing through. What would that be like? He turned to the game on TV, but he'd never really been into American football – that had always been Jack Morrison's thing. Memories surfaced, like vomit, and he sipped at his beer, chasing a hope for inebriation to keep those feelings at bay.

This was how it always was. He lived his life running from his past, swallowing back his emotions, nursing vices like smoking and drinking to keep his thoughts from turning to the man he once was and the ghosts from his past. He ran from the law, now, too, as if running from all those other things wasn't enough. How wonderful it would have been to come in and flirt with the tattooed bartender without having to hide his identity and make up excuses for his missing arm. Maybe he'd even have a couple of friends to call up and invite to meet him here.

He was on his third beer and feeling sleepy when his wings were brought out to him. The girl had lied. Or else she had terrible taste in chicken wings. Even asking for extra crispy, they came out soggy and hard to stomach, and McCree wondered how awful the rest of the menu must be for this to be the best item on it. Still, it was his first real meal of the day, so he sucked the bones clean. He even ate the carrots and celery, after scooping them through ranch dressing. He probably could have eaten an entire second plate, but it was now his exhaustion that demanded to be taken care of.

“I like that fancy arm of yours,” the bartender said as he paid. He saw on the tab her name was Jenny. If he had been the McCree from ten years ago, he would have asked her if she wanted to touch it. Maybe that was even what she was hoping he would suggest. Tonight, he just grabbed enough cash from his wallet to cover his meal and tip her twenty percent.

His feet felt too heavy as he shuffled out of the bar and into the warm night. The adjacent motel had its own parking lot, but McCree glanced at Ashe's bike and decided that he'd leave it where it was for now. The wings sat heavy and unpleasant in his stomach, swimming in beer, and he felt sure he'd throw up. Forget the shower. The shower could wait. He just wanted to pass out in a real bed and stop thinking for a few hours.

As he turned for the motel doors, something strange caught his eye. It was a flash of brilliant neon green in the darkness, right along the line of the motel's roof. He stopped, his hand hovering over his holster, but as soon as he had noticed it, the light was gone. “You're tired,” he muttered to himself. But he wasn't an easy man to spook, and his intuition told him to be careful. _Christ_ , he thought. The last thing he wanted right now was some fresh bullshit to deal with.

When there came no further sign of movement or light on the roof, McCree made his way under the carport and through the front door. A lanky man was leaned back in a chair behind the check-in desk, watching some TV series on his phone, which sat propped up before him on a pizza box. He paused the show to get McCree situated in a room and passed him the keycard.

“You know, you look familiar...” the guy said, looking McCree up and down with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

 _Shit._ If the guy recognized him from his wanted posters or from his Overwatch days, it would all be over. No bed tonight. He'd have to be back on the road, putting as much distance between himself and here as he could.

“You play pool with Old Paulie next door on Tuesdays, dontcha?” the guy asked.

“Naw. Ain't ever been through these parts before,” McCree said.

“Oh, my bad, Mister,” the guy said, “You look just like him. Now that I think about it, he ain't got a fake arm at all.”

McCree sighed. “It's all right. I just got one of those faces, I guess.”

Before the conversation could go on any longer, McCree waved the man a goodbye and headed back outside, looking down at the keycard in his fingers. Room 117. A sign on the wall told him that his room would be somewhere to the left, near the pool that glowed blue from underwater lights and was surrounded by old plastic pool chairs. A huge red sign warned that there would be no lifeguard on duty. Everything smelled like chlorine. McCree let his gaze move up from the pathetic pool to the rooftop, but all was still. It had been a reflection of the neon signs off something up there, he tried to convince himself. To top it all off, he was so worn out after the mess with Ashe and the Deadlock Gang earlier that he was liable to affect his senses. But as he walked the perimeter of the building, his eyes shifting from the rooftop to the numbers on the doors, he couldn't shake that bad feeling.

“I know you're there,” he said, trying to keep his tone conversational.

The question was – now what? If someone had been following him, perhaps someone from the Deadlock Gang, then he was a sitting duck if he went to sleep in his motel room, but he also knew that, if he didn't get sleep soon, then he'd be useless if a fight broke out.

“Jesse.”

He spun around and aimed his revolver.

At first, McCree thought he was seeing things. It was Genji.

McCree had spent more time with Gabriel Reyes than he'd spent with any other member of Overwatch, but a close second was Genji Shimada. In many ways, he thought of Genji as a brother, although he knew Genji had never seen him in the same light. Together, as Blackwatch, they had gone on more missions together than McCree could even really remember. Genji had never enjoyed McCree's lightheartedness and sense of humor; he reacted with indifference to every attempt at friendship. McCree couldn't blame him, though. Nearly being murdered by your own brother sounded unbearable to McCree, but to then, on top of that, have to come to terms with life as more machine than man? He couldn't even imagine. Just losing an arm and learning to live with this cybernetic replacement had been bad enough, but Genji had lost nearly half of his body. So while anyone else with such a sour, brooding disposition would have wound up on McCree's shit list, he had, instead, pitied Genji, and had never stopped trying to befriend him, right up until the day Genji suddenly left.

And now here he was, standing beside a pool at a shit motel off Route 66, the green lights in his machinery glowing brilliant against the dark desert night.

McCree lowered his revolver, but he did not holster it. He wasn't sure if running into Genji here was a good thing or a terrible one. Was Genji friend or foe? “Long time no see,” McCree said.

It occurred to him that, if Genji had wanted to harm him, he would have been able to do so without alerting McCree of his presence. The noise from the bar, even all the way across the property, was still loud enough to cover the very soft noises of Genji's running mechanisms. If he was here in front of McCree right now, it wasn't to kill him. At least not yet. Letting out a low, long breath, McCree returned his gun to his holster.

“How'd you find me?” he asked.

“I've been following you for days now,” Genji said, “I knew you'd come for Echo after the recall.”

“And you didn't think to give me a hand back there?”

Something astonishing happened. Genji _laughed_. In all the years that McCree had worked beside Genji, he had never heard him laugh. The man had always been serious, always withdrawn. Despite how Angela defended him, everyone had been on edge around Genji. His patience was needle-thin, and his rage was needle-sharp. “You seemed to have it under control,” Genji answered, “I would have stepped in if it became necessary.”

McCree smiled at him and extended a hand. When Genji took it, instead of shaking, McCree pulled him into a one-armed hug. Genji embraced him in return. “It's good t'see ya, Shimada,” McCree said. They separated, the moment gone a little awkward, and for a while just studied each other. In the darkness, Genji's body cast them in a chartreuse light. “So, why'd you bother trackin' me down?”

“Are you planning to answer the recall?”

McCree scratched at his beard. “I ain't sure yet,” he admitted, “I've got the law on my back for a lotta things. Things I never did. And I don't know that I could stand t'go back, Genji. Not after what happened.”

He did not have to elaborate. Genji had been there. Genji knew how he had loved so many of the founding Overwatch members. They had been like parents to him. Losing so many of them, one right after the other, had been fatal blows to the young man Jesse McCree had once been. In many ways, the last bits of him had died in the explosion of the Overwatch Swiss headquarters. He might not have a grave, but all that remained of him had been buried right beside Reyes and Morrison.

“Can we go sit down, maybe, Genji?” he muttered, “I'm tuckered out.”

Genji bowed his head. “We can catch up in the morning. Go to bed. Get some rest.”

“Naw, that ain't what I meant. Just, if we could - ” but McCree's body betrayed him with a massive yawn in the middle of his sentence, one that made his eyes water and his jaw ache.

Genji gave him a playful push back towards the rows of doors along the wall. “Go on. We will speak in the morning.”

McCree wasn't going to argue further. Another yawn threatened to escape him, but he swallowed it back and brushed the wetness from the corners of his eyes. “Are you answerin' the recall?” he asked.

“I plan to, yes. I think that if this war breaks out, it will make the first one look like child's play. Things are about to get bad, Jesse. The world will need us more than ever.”

“So that's why you came all the way out here?” McCree said, “T'give me a recruitment speech?” None of this was a new idea to McCree. Many nights, he had laid awake, worrying about the state of the world, but knowing its fate no longer rested on his shoulders. Without Reyes to guide him, McCree was just some farm boy with a mean aim and a confused sense of justice.

“No,” Genji said, “I must do something before I go back. Something I hope that you can assist me with. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

So McCree pulled himself away from Genji, tossing him a wave over his shoulder as he counted the numbers on the doors that he passed. 117. There it was. He turned to give Genji a final glance, but the man had already disappeared. Part of McCree wondered if Genji had ever been there at all. Maybe he was losing his mind.

He swiped the keycard. The room inside was sad – a double bed, a TV, a table and two chairs. It smelled like stale cigarettes and chlorine from the pool. There was an unusual brown stain on the ceiling, as well as cigarette burns in the comforter. McCree, who had been forced to sleep in many unconventional places, could not have cared less about these things. Without even turning on the lights, he stripped down to his underwear and collapsed onto the mattress.

For the first time in many years, he dreamed of Ana Amari.


	2. Trail of Breadcrumbs

McCree stuffed his face at the complimentary breakfast that morning - fluffy waffles drenched in cheap syrup, weak coffee, a variety of fruits and muffins, and even serving-size boxes of Lucio-Oh's. Genji sat across from him and talked. He told McCree how he had spent the past few years living in a monastery in Nepal with the Shambali monks, how he'd had a spiritual awakening and had come to peace with what he had become – half-man and half-machine. He gave McCree a speech about the supreme importance of Omnic equality, which McCree nodded his head through, his attention mostly on peeling an orange, and then he expressed his desire to be Overwatch's voice for Omnic rights when he answered the recall. The more he spoke, the more astonished McCree grew, not because of what he was saying (although it was, truly, a complete turn from the Genji that McCree had once known), but because of how _much_ he was talking. When Genji had been saved by Overwatch and begun going on missions at McCree's side - ten years ago now, McCree realized – there were times when McCree was alone with him for days without ever getting more than a nod or a grunt from the man. In fact, if McCree added up every word that he had ever heard the man speak, he was pretty sure it'd be fewer than a hundred. And he didn't think that was unique to their relationship. In fact, he would have been willing to bet money that those one hundred words were at least fifty words more than anyone else on the team had heard, excluding perhaps Angela, who was the doctor responsible for saving Genji's life.

“You know, Genji,” McCree said, his mouth full of dry cereal, “I like this new you. I like talkin' with you.”

Genji lifted his hands to his head, and he popped the face plate off his helmet, revealing his eyes. Back in the old days, with Genji's eyes always reflecting the red glow from his Blackwatch armor, McCree had always assumed Genji's irises were the color of blood. They had always seemed both icy cold and scalding hot at the same time. Today, though, McCree finally saw that Genji's eyes were brown. Darker than his own, almost black, but they were warm with affection and emotion. “I like it, too,” he said.

McCree wasn't sure whether he meant that he liked his new self or he liked their conversation, but either way, he smiled. “You said you had t'do somethin' before goin' back to Overwatch?” he said.

“Find my brother.”

It was the last thing in the world that McCree had expected to hear, and he recoiled as though he'd been physically slapped. “Your brother?” he repeated, becoming aware of how bitter and stale this coffee tasted on his suddenly dry tongue, “The one who tried t'kill you? Why? You want revenge?”

“What?” Genji asked, jerking back, startled. He chuckled, and just like last night, McCree was blown away by how unusual the sound was coming from the man across from him. For the first time, McCree found himself wondering what kind of person Genji might have been before his nearly fatal encounter with his brother. Perhaps he had once been a man to laugh a lot. “Have you not paid attention to anything that I have said? I am not angry at my brother. In fact, I showed myself to him this spring. He has spent the past decade repenting for what he has done. I believe, in many ways, he has suffered as much as I have. I do not wish to make him pay further for his actions.”

McCree nearly sprayed his sip of coffee across the table. He managed to choke it down. “Are you crazy? What the hell do you wanna find him for? You wanna lose the rest of your body?”

“Jesse.”

“No. Whatever you're gonna ask me to do for him, the answer's no.” He pushed his food aside, too sick to his stomach to take another bite.

“I came to you because you were the closest thing I had to a friend while I worked for Overwatch,” Genji said, “But also, I felt that you, out of everyone, would understand that a man is not defined by his past mistakes.”

That hurt. McCree picked up his fork and began to push around the remaining soggy pieces of his waffle, streaking syrup around the plate.

“You and I are not innocent men, Jesse. If we were, we would not be where we are today.”

McCree took in a long, deep breath and sat back in his chair. “So why do you wanna find him? You said you already talked to him just a couple months ago.”

“That's the problem,” Genji said, “After our conversation, Hanzo went missing.”

“Well, Genji, he's a grown man. There's no reason to assume foul play or nothin' right away.”

“I fear he may have been recruited by Talon.”

“Talon!” McCree barked, “He sounds real remorseful, Genji. You ain't really sellin' me on this mission o'yours. Somethin' tells me if you answer the recall, you'll run into him before you know it.”

He watched Genji's fingers run over the edges of his face plate, as though anxious to replace it and hide his eyes from meeting McCree's, but he kept it off, his exposed gaze tumultuous with emotion. “Talon has been trying to recruit Hanzo since we were young. If he has agreed to join, it is bad news for Overwatch. Imagine a man with Widowmaker's aim, Reaper's cunning, and Doomfist's rage. Not to mention wealth only comparable to Maximilien's.”

“He sounds like a real winner, Genji. Weren't you just defendin' him? What the hell happened to that?”

“That's why I need help,” Genji said, and McCree noticed his tone was now desperate, his hands clenched into fists on the table, “I don't believe he would join willingly. It makes no sense to me. I fear he has been abducted or... or...”

A flash of grief in his eyes made McCree sit back up straight.

Genji continued, “What if he's been brainwashed, like they did to Amélie? I can't imagine how devastating of an enemy he would be to our cause.”

McCree clenched his teeth. When Amélie, as Widowmaker, had murdered her husband and Overwatch agent Gérard Lacroix, Reyes had been inconsolable. More than inconsolable. He had cracked. “So,” he said, “What do you expect me to do? I told you, I'm not ready to go back to Overwatch. I may never go back.”

“Jesse,” Genji pleaded with him, “Does this sound like an Overwatch mission to you? Does this sound like something that can be solved with guns and justice?”

McCree inhaled. He knew what Genji was about to say, and he steeled himself for the blow of those words.

“This is a Blackwatch job,” Genji said, “That is why I need you.”

McCree muttered to himself, “A Reyes job, not a Morrison job.” It was an old joke that had often been made at Overwatch bases.

“I am right, aren't I?”

All that McCree could do was nod.

* * *

On a plane somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, McCree got an idea.

He was leaned all the way back in his seat, trying to read a random true crime book he'd picked up from a shop in the airport before boarding, but the lighting was poor and the words seemed to swim before his eyes. Genji, in the window seat of the same row, had fallen asleep watching NHK on the screen in front of him, and he'd been out for hours now. McCree found his eyes roaming from the pages of his book to the television show. They were doing a tour of Electric Town in Akihabara, and one of the reporters was browsing a store filled with miscellaneous computer parts.

“Sombra,” he accidentally whispered out loud. If he could get in touch with Sombra, she would know if Hanzo had been taken by Talon. While computer hacking was her focus, he knew she also dabbled as an information broker.

McCree and Sombra were far from friends; in fact, as an ex-Overwatch agent and a Talon agent, they were enemies, but, since Overwatch had been disbanded, the two had run into each other on more than one occasion. While McCree had been hiding in Mexico for several months over the course of the last few years, they had done enough drinking together that he felt sure she'd at least entertain a conversation with him. And, with Overwatch being recalled, between him and Genji, they might even know a bit of information worthy to get her to divulge a tiny Talon secret.

But this was no bar in Calaveras. This was a plane on the way to Tokyo. McCree couldn't track her down while halfway across the planet. She wasn't exactly a contact he could dial up on a phone or shoot an email to. In fact, this burner phone he had picked up specifically for the trip likely couldn't even call Mexico, if she was even still there. With Overwatch recalled, who know where she was or what she was up to.

McCree reached across the middle seat and prodded Genji in the shoulder. Genji grunted and rolled over, resting his metal cheek against the window shade. “Genji!” he hissed.

Genji stirred, stretching first one arm and then the other. “What is it?” he asked, turning to face McCree.

“I was just thinkin',” McCree said, “Do you remember Sombra?”

“Who?” Genji asked, but then his sleepy brain seemed to catch up with the conversation, “Sombra? From Talon?”

“Yeah. She tried to break into Athena pretty much every other week, I reckoned you might remember her,” he said.

Genji snorted. “Oh, yes. How could I forget? What about her?”

“Well, I was thinkin'...” he said, “If there was some way to reach out to her, I bet I could get her to tell us if Talon has Hanzo.”

“Why would she tell us that?” Genji asked.

Before McCree could answer, a flight attendant wheeled her cart to his side and offered them drinks. Genji took a bottle of water, McCree asked for a Coke, and when she was gone, he continued, “I think we could give her somethin', too.”

“What? You wish to divulge Overwatch secrets to a Talon agent?” Genji asked, his tone sharp.

“Listen, Genji, nothin's secret to Sombra for long. She'll know everythin' we do within weeks, maybe days, if Overwatch is gettin' back together. If we can tell her somethin' first, she'll tell us about your brother.”

“So you wish to tell her that Overwatch is being recalled?” Genji said.

“Oh, she already knows that, I'm sure,” McCree said, grinning and shaking his shaggy head, “I promise you, she knew the day Winston sent that message out.”

“Then what information can we possibly bargain with?”

“I don't know. We'd figure it out. But this is all hypothetical. I can't think of how to get in touch with her. If we could, though, I think it'd save us a ton of time and effort.”

Genji sighed. It was obvious that he wasn't crazy about the idea, but he gave a slow nod. “Give me time. I will try to think of something.”

But Genji fell asleep again within fifteen minutes. _Oh, well,_ Jesse thought. Not ten minutes later, he gave up himself. It had been a stupid idea, anyway. Who knew if Sombra would even humor him? Or if she'd even tell him the truth? So he opened the plastic baggy containing his complimentary headphones, and he scrolled through the selection of free movies on his screen, until he found one to fall asleep to.

About three hours form Narita Airport, he was shaken awake. His whole body felt sore from sleeping in the cramped seat, and his skin felt clammy from the recycled air. Genji continued to shake him until he mumbled, “Whadya want?”

“Sombra is a hacker,” Genji said.

“Yeah?” McCree muttered, rubbing at his eyes.

“So can't you contact her online?”

McCree laughed. “I already thought of that, but Genji, I don't exactly got her email address. It ain't that easy. She covers her tracks.”

“You don't need her email,” Genji said, “All you need to do is lay your own tracks for her to follow. Sombra will have her eyes on anything online that is Overwatch related right now, if you are correct and she knows about the recall.”

“I ain't followin',” McCree said.

“If Sombra sees someone online talking about her and Talon and Overwatch, she is sure to do the work for us and track us down herself,” Genji explained.

McCree grinned, “Damn it, Genji. You're probably right.”

He was too excited to wait the remaining hours to landing, so he paid the fee to use the plane wifi and signed on using his burner phone. He knew exactly where he wanted to start.

McCree remembered the first time he had heard about the discussion board. He was never good with computers, didn't spend much time on the internet at all, and had no social media accounts. But one of the other agents had come up to him one day, while on a mission in Singapore, and he'd asked him, “Hey, Jess, you seen what they're saying about you online?”

“Huh? Whatdya mean?” McCree, in his early twenties at the time, had replied.

So the other agent, his face grim, had texted a URL to McCree. He had opened the link that night in bed in his hotel room and found a disturbing discussion board dedicated to Overwatch. Everything was largely negative, no better than a tabloid magazine “reporting” on celebrities with a bad reputation, except these weren't journalists. They were all just regular people. The same people whose lives and safety that McCree and the others at Overwatch fought every day to protect. These people were sharing photographs taken in secret, conspiracy theories, rumors and gossip. Some of it was ridiculous and harmless – _Does Reinhardt Wilhelm, founding member of Overwatch, have a secret family with an alien wife?_ Or _New photos emerge! Are Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes lovers?_ But other posts, and the comments beneath them, filled McCree with shame and anger. _Why Overwatch is responsible for Thursday's bombing in Israel_ and _Does Overwatch control Omniums?_ And _Shocking new ties between Ana Amari and the Illuminati!_ And _Top 15 reasons why Gabriel Reyes should be F I R E D._ The general consensus seemed to be that Overwatch was the source of violence in the world and not the solution. People rarely had anything positive to say, besides how attractive or well-dressed so-and-so of Overwatch might be. Jesse got so lost in the boards, and so sickened by what he saw, that he nearly forgot the original reason he came to the site. But he decided that he didn't want to see what was being said about himself. He closed the broswer and never went back to the website again, although the incident had left a permanent stain on his heart.

McCree knew that, even though the site had likely gone dormant, it was exactly the kind of thing Sombra would keep an eye on. Sombra worked on a much higher level than public discussion boards, but he knew she wouldn't turn her nose up at paparazzi style press, if it meant discovering news about Overwatch. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if she posted half of the stuff on there herself, trying to stir shit up.

He didn't remember the URL, but a quick search pulled it up right away. It wasn't as dead as he assumed it would be. Just three weeks ago, the most recent topic had been posted – _Took some photos while exploring an abandoned Overwatch base in Colorado._ McCree almost clicked the title, but he stopped himself. He didn't want to get sucked into this negativity again.

McCree made a throwaway account with a completely obvious username – Agent3945_45 – after his original Overwatch code number. If, for some reason, Sombra needed the help, she'd be able to figure out who he was based on that alone, he was sure. After signing in, he began to spam the boards, creating posts that Sombra would not be able to ignore.

_I am looking for Sombra_

_Talon leader Maximilien helped Overwatch catch Doomfist_

_Moira O'Deorain, once an Overwatch member, did experiments that led to Gabriel Reyes's death_

_Talon hacker Sombra was in Calaveras drinking alone on Christmas last year_

_Talon kidnapped and brainwashed wife of Gerard LaCroix_

_Talon has ties with Vishkar Corporation_

_Overwatch is being recalled_

_Talon is exacerbating the Omnic Crisis_

McCree kept posting topics like this until he couldn't think of anything else, creating perhaps 40 different threads. For the body of the posts, he just copied and pasted the title over and over again. Feeling exhilarated, when the flight attendant came by for the last round of drinks, he paid for two glasses of red wine, both of which he downed before curling back up in his chair, feeling confident in his plan. 


	3. The Land of the Rising Sun

McCree had seen the world while working for Overwatch, from Europe's snowy Alps to the jungles of South America. He never had much of an opportunity to play tourist in any of those places, though. Japan was definitely on his list of destinations that he would most like to explore, but here he was, jumping straight off baggage claim and onto the rail system, headed for Hanamura. Last time he had been here with Blackwatch, investigating some Talon ties to yakuza activity, they had flown into Hanamura on one of Overwatch's aircrafts, so this was his first time taking one of their high-tech trains.

It was nighttime, and the city that sped past the windows was all lit up, countless stories of flashing lights and neon signs. There were buildings as far as the eye could see, and he strained his vision to try to catch glimpses down every bustling street and narrow alley. He was tempted by the idea of hopping off at the next station and getting lost out there – skipping from tiny bar to tiny bar and drinking the jetlag away, falling in step with the masses of pedestrians on the sidewalks, breathing in the aroma of fresh food wafting out onto the streets from the many restaurants. Perhaps it was his brain moving slowly from exhaustion, but everything out through those windows looked so magical and alive. He was not a fan of city life by any means, but he could appreciate the beauty and spirit of this place as an outsider looking in.

With each stop, their train car grew more and more crowded, until McCree was unable to see out the windows due to the number of bodies packed in around him. He offered his seat to a young woman with shopping bags; he had been sitting for nearly a whole day at that point and was glad to stretch his legs. After about three quarters of an hour, he and Genji gathered their bags and got off at a station to switch lines. Hanamura was in the next prefecture over, closer to Mount Fuji, and they'd be taking a bullet train to get there. By that time, many of the stores and restaurants had closed, but the station was still busy with commuters trying to get to their next destination before the trains stopped running for the night. Signs overhead were in English and Japanese, but Genji never once stopped to look up at them. He swam with the crowd, like a single fish in a massive school, and McCree had to jog sometimes to keep up with him.

They managed to get seats on the last bullet train to Hanamura Station. He took the window seat this time, and Genji sat in the aisle, but there wasn't much for McCree to see. The train flew out of Tokyo, leaving behind all of the interesting sights, and soon they were passing through moonlit fields and pitch-black tunnels. He ended up growing bored of the nothingness, so he opened his phone to check the posts that he had made on the discussion board. Only one comment had been made, an anonymous user who simply asked on his most recent topic, “Are you high, bro?”

“Any luck?” Genji asked.

He shook his head and turned off the phone, sliding it back into his bag.

“Don't worry. It is still early in much of the world,” Genji said.

McCree nodded, but it wasn't the search for Hanzo or Sombra that was planting anxiety into his mood. “They really hated us,” he muttered.

“What?”

“We fought so damn hard for everyone,” McCree continued, “And look where we are now.”

Genji's eyes over the edge of his mask were dark and fierce. “Do not say that. We saved the lives of countless people. Is this why you do not wish to answer the recall? Because if that is the case, I beg you to consider whom you are speaking to. No one has more reason to be angry than I do, but I have put my anger behind me. There are always going to be bad people in the world, Jesse. We cannot let those bad people define what happens to all the good people.”

“How do you know we ain't the bad guys ourselves, Genji?” McCree asked.

Genji reached to put a hand on McCree's shoulder. “Consider all of the children who played with a Jesse McCree action figure, who woke up early on the weekends to watch you in the Overwatch cartoon, and ask yourself – are we villains to those who needed us? Who still need us? The negative voices are always louder than the positive ones, but do not let the latter be drowned out entirely.”

Genji really had changed so much. McCree could hardly believe what he was saying. While he listened, and understood the words' meaning, it made no impact on him. He shrugged Genji's hand off his shoulder and gazed back out the window. They were entering an urban area again, buildings beginning to close in on the train tracks, lights beginning to flood the darkness. He wanted to end this conversation, so he shut his mouth. It was all so easy for Genji to say, when Genji didn't have the law on his trail for a bunch of crimes that he had never committed. But what would happen to him - he wondered but did not ask aloud - when he got tired of running?

* * *

McCree, if left alone, probably would have slept in until early afternoon, but at around four o'clock in the morning, he was woken by a blaring tune playing close to his ear. Half-asleep, he scrambled up to his feet. Across the room, on his own futon, Genji groaned and folded his arms over his head to cover the ears he no longer had from the noise. “It's your phone,” he groaned, “Turn it off.”

They were in a traditional inn, which Genji had told him was called a _ryokan_ , located off a main road in Hanamura. McCree had been shocked that a place like this existed smack-dab in the middle of such an urban city, although here, so close to the castle and shrine, was more old-fashioned than the rest of Hanamura. Their room of tatami mats and sliding doors had been the exact opposite of what McCree had been hoping for, but as soon as they had spread out their futons, both of them had passed out in spite of the commotion of the other guests making their way up and down the halls to use the single communal bathroom.

McCree dropped to the tatami on his knees and crawled for his phone, plugged in to an outlet beside his futon. When he saw an unknown number (but of course it was unknown – his only contact was Genji's burner phone) as well as the time, an irrational anger overcame him. He swiped the screen to snap at the caller, “Who is this?”

“You have my attention, Jesse McCree.”

It took his brain a moment to piece together this puzzle, but when he finally realized whom he was speaking to, he nearly screamed in excitement. “Good mornin, Miss Sombra! Or afternoon? Night? Wherever you are.”

“What do you think you're doing, posting things like that online?”

“It worked, didn't it? Here you are.”

“Do you realize the harm you could have done to Overwatch if Doomfist had seen some of those cute little posts of yours?”

McCree chuckled, scratching his beard, “Not as much harm as it'd do to Talon, I imagine.”

He heard a sigh from the other end of the call.

Genji, meanwhile, had pulled himself out of his futon and onto his hands and knees, and he crawled across the room to kneel at McCree's side. McCree took the phone from his ear and put the call on speaker, gesturing with one finger to his own lips for Genji to stay silent.

“I'm lookin' for someone,” he told her.

He could practically hear the smirk on her face as she asked, “And you expect me to help you?”

“Well, Miss Sombra, it'd sure be nice o' you.”

He heard the _clicks_ of her fingers flying across a keyboard somewhere on the other side of the planet. “Who are you looking for, McCree? You're in Hanamura, so let me guess – your old friend Genji?”

“No, actually,” McCree said. He wasn't surprised at all that she knew his location. In fact, using his cell signal, she probably knew the exact ryokan he was in. “I know where Genji is. I'm lookin' for someone else.”

“So Genji has answered the recall?”

McCree clenched his teeth. She sounded so damn smug, and Genji's eyes widened in the dark room with shock or perhaps concern. “Well, how 'bout you let me know what I want, and I'll tell you what you want?” he suggested.

“Oh, McCree,” she teased him, her tone light and playful, “I wish I could be there to see the stupid look on your face right now.”

“Then come,” McCree said, “You know where I am. I ain't got nothin' t'hide. You get yerself over here, and I'll buy you a sake, and you can tell me exactly where Hanzo Shimada is.”

“Hanzo Shimada, hmm? Why would you be looking for him?”

“I'm gonna level with you, Sombra. I ain't lookin' for him, but my friend Genji is his brother. And Genji's lookin' for him. All we wanna know is if Talon's got him. You can tell me that much at least, can't you? A yes or a no?”

There was a pause of several heartbeats before Sombra spoke again, her tone more serious. “I can't tell you that for free, McCree.”

“And like I said a second ago, Sombra – you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. This ain't Overwatch stuff. Just a fella lookin' for his big brother.”

“I want to know who is answering the recall.”

McCree was a little surprised that Sombra hadn't hesitated at all. He pressed the mute button on his phone and exchanged worried glances with Genji. “You cannot betray Overwatch, Jesse. Not for my brother's sake.”

“The way I see it, this ain't betrayal,” McCree said, “She'll find out eventually. As soon as Overwatch starts sendin' people out on missions again, she'll know.”

“You could lie,” Genji suggested.

McCree had not taken lying into the equation. He chewed his bottom lip and un-muted the call. “How do I know you ain't gonna lie to me, Sombra?” he asked.

“And how will I know that you aren't lying to me?” she replied, “Give me one single fact that I can find verifiable proof of, and I will tell you the truth. You have my word.”

“I don't find your word's worth too much,” he said, “And like I already told you, this has nothin' to do with Overwatch. It's just Genji's worried you Talon folks have turned his brother into another Widowmaker.”

“Wouldn't that be poetic justice, after what Hanzo turned his own brother into?”

McCree didn't answer, but he silently agreed. He felt Genji's eyes roaming his face for a reaction, so he focused hard on keeping his expression blank.

“But like I said - if I can prove you've told me something true, then-”

“Listen,” McCree said, cutting her off, “There's only one thing I know that I reckon you could look up some proof on.”

“That's all I ask.”

“Echo,” McCree said, “She's been reactivated. I woke her up myself. If you're quick, I bet you can still find the remains of the train robbery, it's up on Route 66 near the Panorama Diner. That train was transportin' her. It'll have been four days ago, now. Or I guess five now, I'm still messed up from the time change.”

“So that was you?” Sombra asked, “You blew up that train? I had assumed Vishkar had gone after her in secret.”

“You said one fact,” he told her, “I gave you one. It don't matter who blew the train up. What matters is that I've reactivated her.”

She gave an exasperated huff, and he heard the noise of her keyboard once more. “Well, I'll be honest, I'd rather Overwatch have her back than see her fall into anyone else's hands.”

“And Hanzo?” McCree reminded her.

“Yes, I suppose you've earned it,” she said, “I don't know where Hanzo is. But he's definitely not with Talon.”

Genji exhaled in relief.

“Thanks, Sombra,” McCree said, “You coulda been a hero, y'know?”

“And end up like you?” she asked, laughing.

McCree winced.

“Listen, I don't know why I bother doing this, I guess I'm feeling nice today,” Sombra said, “But if you keep this phone on you, I will contact you if I learn something. I just have one more question, on a personal level. Will _you_ be answering the recall?”

McCree avoided Genji's expectant stare. “I don't know,” he said, “Honest I don't. I'm sure if I did, I'd get arrested in the blink of an eye, thanks mostly to you folks framin' me for damn near everything.” The phone was quiet for a long time, perhaps half a minute. All he could hear was the keyboard, rapid as gunfire. “Sombra? You still there?” 

“I'm sorry, McCree,” she said, and he could only laugh.

“Yeah, that's real rich, comin' from you. You feel bad framin' me, but you don't feel bad for all the other shit you do?”

Sombra ignored him. “I'll be in touch, McCree. But I believe in the meantime, you should reach out to Fareeha Amari. I think she has information that you might want.”

“About Hanzo?”

“No. About Overwatch. Goodbye, McCree.”

Before he could return the farewell, Sombra was gone. For a long time, Genji and McCree sat in the dark, listening to the dial tone with their faces lit up by the screen. But then McCree turned the phone off, and Genji sighed. “At least he has not been taken by Talon,” he said.

“That's good n' all, but now we don't got a place to start lookin'.”

“I still wish to start at the castle,” Genji said, “That is the last place I saw him.”


	4. Lost in Translation

Since the call had left both Genji and McCree too anxious to return to restless, jetlagged sleep, they dressed in the dark and slid open the door to the garden, sneaking out that way, since the front of the ryokan was closed for another few hours. It was half past four o'clock in the morning, but already the sky was lighting up, deep orange spilling upwards from the horizon. McCree was already sweating; he could tell the day was going to be sweltering. The trains had yet to start their runs, so the roads of Hanamura were empty, but soon the first commuters would begin their walks to the station. Genji walked as silent as a ghost, but McCree's footsteps seemed to pound against the pavement, unnaturally loud in the otherwise quiet streets.

The Shimada Castle's tremendous front doors were closed. McCree tilted his head back to stare up at the old wood, which bore a carving of twin dragons circling each other on its face. Genji, as catlike as McCree remembered, scaled the wall and slipped over the gate. McCree waited in the street, trying to look casual and hoping that no one spotted him breaking in. When the gate opened, just a crack, he wiggled in and helped Genji shut it behind them.

McCree had been to Hanamura before, but he'd never actually set foot in the castle where Genji had grown up. At the time he had been here, the castle had still been swarming with Shimada clan members. This morning, though, the place was as empty as the streets had been. The doors opened into a garden of rock and sand, surrounded by wooden platforms, with buildings on all sides. He had no idea what the structures were; they were built in a traditional Japanese style, of course, and all made of wood, with painted scarlet posts supporting oversized, gently sloped roofs. Across from the doors, on the far size of the rock garden, was tower that housed a bronze behemoth of a bell, which looked eerie and extraordinary in the pale darkness of near-dawn. Beyond a smaller gate to their right, McCree could see the immense Shimada Castle looming down upon them.

“Where's the welcoming committee?” McCree asked, “I figured this place'd be crawlin' with yakuza.”

“Hanzo and I have wiped much of the Shimada clan out of the area,” Genji explained, “I believe the last time he was here, he took care of the remaining security. We should have all the time we need to explore.”

McCree still felt uneasy. He had brought Peacekeeper, of course – sneaking the revolver in a secret compartment of his luggage – but had left it back in the ryokan. Walking around armed in Japan was a quick way to get arrested, and he wanted to blend in as much as possible, which was already a challenge considering how much bigger and hairier he was than most of the population. “Still,” he said, “Maybe we should split up 'n get outta here as fast as we can.”

Genji agreed and volunteered to take the castle, which McCree didn't argue with – the man had grown up there, after all, and probably knew every corner of it like the back of his hand. So he began his investigation of the gardens. It wasn't long before he realized how futile the search was. Much of the grounds were blocked off to him, but the parts he could access were empty. There was no furniture, no sign that anyone had ever lived there, let alone Hanzo in particular. The wooden rooms and corridors were old, perhaps even a thousand years old or more, and he couldn't tell what was normal wear on the building and what might be a clue.

McCree had always been the man sent on a mission after the initial espionage and investigation had already been completed. He was definitely in over his head. He nearly texted Genji to call the seach off. They were wasting their time hunting a grown man who did not want and did not deserve to be found. Let him disappear. The world was better off without him. But he knew that texting any of those thoughts to Genji would hurt the other man, who still, stubbornly, clung to the idea that Hanzo could be rescued from himself.

“He still loves you,” McCree muttered aloud to the sky, as though Hanzo could hear him, “All this damn time, after what you did to him, he still loves you.”

They'd be better off asking locals if they had seen Hanzo recently, he figured, as he crossed the zen garden and through the bell tower, coming to stand against a railing. Out beyond the castle, he saw the urban jungle of Hanamura stretching out before him, all the way to majestic Mount Fuji's base. The Shimada clan must have once been important people to have a castle built onto a cliffside here, with such a stunning view of the mountain. She was veiled in clouds so thick that he could only see her conical shape. He tried to imagine how this land had once looked, maybe when the first Shimada came to stand in this exact spot, but it was hard to peel away the thousands of buildings and miles of train tracks.

Then he returned closer to the present, his mind instead churning over the idea of young Hanzo and Genji growing up in this austere, elegant place. A castle! It was hard to wrap his head around – his old Blackwatch partner Genji Shimada had been born and raised in a real castle. He turned his back to Fuji and looked behind him, to the grounds. Had they once rung this bell? Perhaps chased each other in circles around it? He reached out his gloved hand and ran his fingers over the dragon etched onto its bronze surface. It occurred to him that this bell likely belonged in a museum, where men like him couldn't touch it. That made the solid feeling of it so much more rewarding. Beyond it, to the garden – had Genji and Hanzo dug in the sand? Had they buried treasure there as children?

Something caught his eye as he stood there musing.

The sun had risen just enough that its yellow reach had stretched over the tops of the buildings. Its rays had caught on something in the sand. No. Not something. Some _things_. They were catching the light and reflecting it back, like fragments of twinkling, fantastic little stars. McCree hurried over, jumping off the platform and down into the zen garden. There were strange objects half-buried in the sand. He stooped to pick them up, brushed them off, and held them up to examine. They were pieces of a material that he couldn't identify, about half the size of his palm. They were a beautiful cerulean blue, the color of a deep, serene ocean or the cloudless summer sky, but when they caught the light in certain angles, they looked almost iridescent. He was able to bend it with some pressure from his fingertips, although it returned back to its original shape when he released it. The only thing he'd ever seen personally to compare the things to were fish scales. Actually, they looked a lot like fish scales, but of a gigantic scale.

McCree was certain these things had nothing to do with Hanzo, but he pocketed them anyway, figuring it wouldn't hurt to show Genji. He stood up, brushed the sand off his palms on the back of his jeans, and stepped back up onto the platform surrounding the garden. “Genji?” he whispered, passing through the inner gate that Genji had gone through to reach the castle's main building. He was in a second garden, this one of tall cherry trees, although it had been months since they had shed their last pink blossoms that Hanamura was named for, and they now bore foliage of emerald-green.

Genji popped into view on the roof of the gazebo, and he dropped down to the yard as swift and silent as a shadow. “Did you find something?” Genji asked.

“I don't think so,” McCree muttered, “Just these.” He held out the handful of scales he had found, fanned out like a hand of cards.

Genji barely glanced at them. He dug into the pocket of his sweatshirt and pulled out more of them, even more than McCree had found, so many he could barely hold onto them all. “I found all of these, too. In the garden and on the veranda, but also on the roof.”

“Do ya know what they are?” McCree asked.

Genji shook his head and returned his findings back to his pocket. “The only other thing I saw is one of the columns on the veranda is broken. I am certain that it was not broken when I was here last this spring. It is quite a lot of damage.”

“What could break a column like that?” McCree asked.

Again, Genji did not know. “But it seems indicative of foul play, I fear.”

McCree pulled his glove off with his teeth and ran a bare fingertip over the scales he still held out in his other hand. Going one direction, it was smooth, but if he stroked it the other way, it felt as rough as sandpaper. “It's like a scale,” he said, “Like a snake, maybe. But about a thousand times too big.”

“I know of a place online we can post a photo to see if anyone recognizes the material,” Genji said, so the pair crept like thieves back out of the castle. It was still curfew back at the ryokan, so they decided to wait a while at a doughnut shop that offered free wifi. The place was already getting crowded, with a long line of sleepy customers waiting to order the first batch of the day. Everything smelled of fresh baking and cinnamon and coffee, but jarringly also of tobacco, because the second floor was a smoking section. McCree ordered himself a couple doughnuts and a black coffee, and he longed to go sit upstairs and light up a cigar, but he wasn't sure if Genji minded that kind of thing, so he said nothing as they grabbed the last open table downstairs.

“So now what?” McCree asked, as Genji busied himself on his phone, “All we got is this junk that probably ain't got nothin' to do with your brother.”

“I want to ask around Hanamura,” Genji said.

“That's what I was thinkin', too,” McCree agreed.

“This will be easier for me to do without you,” Genji said, “Why don't you enjoy the rest of the day. I will meet you back at the ryokan tonight, and we can go get dinner.”

“ _What?_ ” McCree nearly spat out his mouthful of coffee, “I didn't come here t'play tourist. I wanna help.”

“You have been helping, Jesse, but you don't speak Japanese. How could you help me with this? Besides, the locals may be less willing to speak to me with a foreigner at my side. I already am alarming enough to look at.”

Genji was right, of course, but McCree had no intentions of going off to shop or sight-see for the day. It was that moment, as Genji left him alone at the doughnut shop, that he realized for the first time – all these years of aimless wandering, he had ached for the sense of purpose that being on a mission gave him. This search for Hanzo did remind him of the good old days on Blackwatch, and maybe it even allowed him to forget that he was a wanted man, that everyone he had once loved was dead, and that the world who had once seen him as a hero now hated him. So instead of returning to the ryokan, or heading to the station to train-hop around Hanamura, he picked up his coffee and moved upstairs to the smoking section, wheer he lit up a cigar and connected to the wifi.

What was he doing? He had no idea. When he had been a Blackwatch agent, there had been a whole team of people behind the scenes who did all this work for him. Once, it had just been a matter of phoning in to base, and in a few hours, he could have any information he wanted – a person's bank account history, cell phone tracking, call logs, criminal records...

Now, he was on his own.

The first thing, feeling a little childish about it, was enter Hanzo's name in the search bar. He didn't know what he expected. Maybe a mugshot? He doubted a man willing to murder his brother in cold blood had no prior offenses, but he wasn't sure if Japan made those kinds of things available to the public online. Or perhaps he'd find a social media page? It seemed a stretch. He braced himself to find nothing.

He clicked on the first result, which was a encyclopedia website with a page on Shimada Castle. He had been there just minutes ago, and yet it still surprised him to see a website about the castle that shared Genji's surname.

> **^ Background**
> 
> _Shimada Castle is located on a cliff in central Hanamura. Because of its geographical location, Shimada was a strategic point in controlling what is now the Yamanashi and Tokyo prefectures. It maintains its original wooden interiors and external stonework. It is listed as a **National Treasure of Japan.** _
> 
> **^ History**
> 
> _The castle's origins go back to the Sengoku period, when the Shimada Clan, a branch of -_

McCree stopped reading here, as the article went into great detail about the past. He'd never been much of a fan of school and had no interest in a history lesson right now. His eyes scanned the rest of the page, looking for anything that had happened more recently, preferably in the last 100 years. He found nothing, until the very last line. 

> _Shimada Castle is unique in that it is one of the only castles in Japan that has remained privately owned. Its current owner is Hanzo Shimada, of whom little is known._

“Damn,” McCree muttered under his breath. He stubbed out the butt of his cigar in an ash tray, then got started on his second. He thumbed back in his browser and went back to skimming the search results. Most websites were just about Shimada Castle itself – Hanamura tourism pages, lists of popular Japanese castles, articles titled things like “Best Views of Mount Fuji” and “Structures that have Survived Japan's Violent History” - tons and tons of information was available on the castle itself, as a building, and on the Shimada clan's colorful samurai past. He scrolled past websites about a historical figure named Hattori Hanzo, past mentions of various video game and anime characters named Hanzo, there was even some popular J-rock band with a member named Hanzo. The further he read, the less relevant the search became. As far as Hanzo Shimada himself, McCree could find almost nothing. He was especially distressed that he couldn't even find a photograph of the man. Hanzo could be sitting in the room with him and he'd have no clue.

At that thought, he glanced up. By that point, he'd been sitting in the cafe for a little over an hour. The rush of men and women having breakfast or coffee before work had grown, and now even the smoking section was packed. Beside him, a man sat smoking over his coffee and reading a manga. On his other side, a group of women in matching uniforms, perhaps some kind of store employees, were eating and chatting together. He was struck by the hopelessness of this search again.

What would Hanzo look like? McCree knew he was older than Genji, but he had no idea how many years older. In his head, Hanzo was like all the other salarymen in their suits. Well-groomed, slight in build, but maybe he'd look a bit more expensive, like he shopped at places these other demure men couldn't afford. He'd have Genji's eyes, of course – intense and dark and handsome. But that mental picture, while it fit with his idea of a murdering yakuza boss, didn't fit with the rest of what he knew about Hanzo. Skilled enough, tough enough, and ruthless enough to be on Talon's radar – there was something to Hanzo that McCree was incapable of imagining.

It occurred to him that he was searching in the wrong language. He needed to check results in Japanese, but it was an entirely different language! He didn't even have a Japanese keyboard on his phone. He groaned and leaned back in his chair, giving his eyes another break from the screen. His battery was getting low, he noticed. Only 31% charge remaining. He'd have to go back to the ryokan to plug it in. So he rose to his feet, stuffing the phone into his pocket, and started the walk back.

If he was with Overwatch, Athena easily could have searched Japanese websites to help him. He could always ask Genji, too, he supposed, but he was determined to do _something_ useful himself. What would Reyes have done? But wondering was enough to make him feel so alone and angry and hopeless that he didn't let himself linger on the thought. Even if he had to copy and paste websites into an online translator, he would -

_Copy and paste._

McCree ran the rest of the way to the ryokan despite the thick, breeze-less heat. He wove around pedestrians and dodged bicycle riders. Stores were beginning to open, so traffic on the roads had increased, and more and more people were going about their morning. 

_Copy and paste_ , he thought again, determined not to let the idea slip away.

In the ryokan's entrance, the woman at the reception desk bowed her head and wished him, in heavily accented English, "Good morning!"

"Mornin'," McCree said, almost breathless, "Uh, do you have wifi here? Internet?"

He was afraid she might not know enough English to help him, but her face lit up. "Yes, yes!" she said, and she gestured towards a card on the desk in front of her. It was half in Japanese and half in English, and on it was printed the wifi password - GUESTWELCOME1.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, tipping his hat to her, and he returned to his and Genji's room at the far side of the property. If there was air conditioning, it was so minimal that he could barely tell. Thankfully, there was a fan in the room, so he plugged in both the phone and the fan, then stripped down to just his jeans before sitting cross-legged on the tatami. He typed in the password to access the wifi; his phone connected so slowly he was convinced it wasn't going to work. Then he opened two browser windows, moving at a frantic speed, as if any moment now the chances of it working would diminish. In one window, he opened the article about Shimada Castle. In the other, he opened the article about Hattori Hanzo. Then he opened a third window, and int he search bar, he pasted the kanji from "Shimada" and then from "Hanzo."

The results came up in a jumbled mix of katakana, hiragana, and kanji. He wasn't sure how relevant the first result would be, but he clicked it. To his surprise, the first thing that loaded was a photograph of a man and old woman. Before even studying the picture, before letting himself get excited, he used the translator app on his phone so that he could read the caption. 

> _Hanzo Simada (29) poses with great-aunt Yaeko Shimada (76) in front of the gate of Shimada Castle, the ancestor of his family._

"Holy shit," McCree said to himself, bringing the phone up closer to his face. The translation of the caption had been a little messed up, but that wasn't important. This was him. Hanzo. He looked nothing like the salaryman that McCree had imagined. He wore a dark grey pinstriped vest and matching dresspants, a pristine white button-up shirt underneath, and a blue tie with the neatest knot that McCree had ever seen. Hanzo was built so solidly, like a pit bull. McCree couldn't tell his height, but he looked _big,_ his muscular arms and thick thighs seemed about to burst out of his well-tailored clothes. McCree used his first two fingers on the screen to zoom in on Hanzo's face. Every bit of him - eyebrows, nose, jaw, cheekbones - was sharp angles. He had a goatee groomed with the neat precision of his clothes. His hair was slicked back away from his face, except for a single strand that hung loose. McCree zoomed in further on those eyes - exactly the eyes of Genji back when McCree had worked with him on Blackwatch missions, before he had come to peace with himself, when he was so mean and tortured and cold. McCree was hypnotized by the picture. 

"Where are you?" McCree whispered. The idea of him being abducted by Talon seemed foolish now. He didn't need to see the man in action to know how tough Hanzo was; Hanzo gave off an aura of power, even through the phone screen. McCree saved the photo to his phone before moving on to the article itself, which was titled, according to his translator, "The Ugly Side of Most Beautiful Place in Japan." Again, not a perfect translation, but he got most of the meaning. 

> _When Hanzo Shimada was a boy, his life felt like a fairy tale. To be precise, I was born and raised in a castle called Shimada Castle. The picturesque structure that shares his surname is a national treasure of Japan. It was built on the high cliff of Hanamura in the late 15th century. At the beginning of spring, when flowers turn the city into a paradise, Hanamura becomes one of the most popular places in the country. But paradise seems far from perfect.  
>   
>  Hanamura doesn't seem to have a high crime rate, but over the last three months, Hanzo Shimada has lost both his father and younger brother to Yakuza activities, revealing the dark truth of the city._

McCree scoffed at the page. "Yeah, and it's yer own damn fault," he muttered under his breath, "I wonder what the journalist woulda said if he'd known Hanzo'd tried to kill Genji with his own two hands." He continued to read, but after that, the article dove into the past - a history of the Yamanashi prefecture, the most well-known crimes committed in Hanamura, and the long-standing rumors of the Shimada Clan's involvement with the yakuza. All things that dated from long before Hanzo had been born, not even close to the time of his presumed disappearance. McCree was about to give up on this and move onto the next article, when his eyes caught a mention of Hanzo once more. 

> _Mr. Shimada reported the missing person about his brother Genji's bereaved family nine days ago when he was unable to attend an interview with a family lawyer. Police immediately suspected Shimada, who remained innocent and has personally funded the investigation with family property. The clues that have been discovered have not yet been revealed to the public, but so far they have kept doubts from their brother._  
>   
>  Shimada told reporters this Sunday, "Genji was a respectable person. He had a strong sense of justice and had never been actively involved in criminal activity." Genji was trained in martial arts and had the skills of a swordsman, so he believed that he was not abducted.  
>   
> Shimada grew emotionally and paused to collect himself before continuing, "My brother deserves better fate. I wish I could take place for him."

"Oh, fuck you," McCree groaned, looking away from the phone and falling back onto the tatami. He stared up at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He could hope that maybe - _just maybe_ \- Hanzo had said something else and the translation was wrong (it did seem to be doing a pretty poor job with sentence structure overall), but that was a stretch. How _dare_ Hanzo talk about Genji? How _dare_ he even speak his brother's name? 

Should they even bother keeping up this search? It seemed obvious to McCree that Hanzo was some kind of dangerous sociopath. If Hanzo cared about Genji at all, he wouldn't have cut him to pieces in the first place, but he also definitely wouldn't have disappeared after Genji tried to mend their relationship. McCree felt like he had wasted his time and money coming out here. Why had he agreed to this, knowing what Hanzo had done?

To be with Genji, of course. To continue living in the past. To pretend Blackwatch was more than a memory. He turned his face to the fan, letting the cool air blow in his sweaty face. "For Genji's sake," he muttered, "I'll give this my all. But this ain't for you, you brother-killin' bastard. I hope you're dead in a ditch somewhere."

Again, he picked up the phone. It was such a slow process. First, he opened the website, then copied and pasted it all into the translator. He read Japanese news articles titled things like "National Treasure Shimada Castle Under Repair" and "Popularity of new Shimada Castle License Plate" and "Virtual Tour of Shimada Castle!" So many pages unrelated to Hanzo or Genji at all. But then he stumbled upon a treasure. 

"Meet Local Boys Who Challenge the World of Swordsmanship by Storm," McCree read the translation of the title out loud. 

The article, from a Hanamura news site, contained a photograph of two teenagers. Hanzo was a boy of perhaps eighteen, his hair long and pulled back with a ribbon. Despite the hairless chin, there was something so adult about him. He was very muscular for his age, and his face had lost all softness of youth. McCree noticed, with a tightening in his chest, that there was already a deep unhappiness in his dark eyes. Hanzo was contrasted by the other boy at his side. It had to be Genji. His gaze into the camera was playful. McCree had never seen a picture of him before his attempted murder. He looked so much like Hanzo, but with the edges smoothed out. A more delicate nose, brighter eyes, lips turned up in a mischievous smile. McCree, breathless, saved this photograph, too. A subscription was required to read the article, but the picture was worth more to him than any words. He loved seeing Genji that way, all flesh intact, with such life in his eyes. But where was the life in Hanzo's eyes? 

Out of desperation, he began to search in English again, trying combinations of words like "Shimada Hanzo missing person" or "missing people Japan Shimada." There were no relevant results, aside from some articles written about Japan's terrible track record of finding and even properly documenting missing persons cases. It seemed they didn't even have a database to search, and a list of missing people in Japan that he found on one website only had eleven names - all of which were only the most publicized and well-known cases. 

So now what? Overwatch, as an entity of the UN, would have had access to police information about this, if any existed, but, alone, McCree was at a dead-end. The Japanese government would never just volunteer details of any cases to a strange foreigner, especially not one who was wanted across much of the world. He supposed that he could start the search over, typing in Genji's name instead of Hanzo's, but he guessed the results would be largely the same. The only remaining clue to investigate was the scales. 

Expecting nothing, McCree gave a sleepy sign and typed into the search bar - _Shimada Yaeko._ He was surprised to see that several results came up. Most of them were social media profiles for women named Shimada Yaeko, but none were old enough to be Hanzo's and Genji's great aunt. He found one obituary, which made a knot of dread form in his gut. This final thread was unraveling. But then he saw that this woman had lived in California, and she had been dead for sixty-four years. Not the right Shimada Yaeko. The next website contained an article titled "Beppu Hot Springs Still Divided Over Tattooed and Omnic Visitors." He clicked the article and skimmed it, looking for any mention of either Shimada brother. It was about how many of the hot springs and public baths in Japan still refused service to anyone with tattoos or any Omnics, and the debate from both sides of this argument. Yaeko was only mentioned in passing, towards the end. 

> _"I don't wish to alienate our Japanese customers," said Shimada Yaeko, owner of the Ryuuza Ryokan in Beppu, "But foreign visitors have been very understanding for generations. I believe it is time for us to return the gesture and be understanding towards their cultural differences."_

His reading was interrupted by heavy footsteps down the hall. He didn't even have time to reach for his shirt, before Genji had thrown open the sliding door. 

"Genji?" McCree asked, "What's up? You find somethin'?" 

"Jesse. We have to leave."

" _What?"_

"We have to leave. I saw the news. They're broadcasting everywhere." Genji spoke as he gathered his few belongings, stuffing them all back into his bag. 

"What?" McCree repeated, feeling stupid. 

"Null Sector is attacking Paris," Genji explained, "We must help the people. We need to be on the next flight, or it will be too late."

"Null Sector?" McCree said, and speaking the name seemed to suck all the oxygen from his lungs. How long had it been since the last time he encountered them? He wanted - no, needed - to see the news, but at the same time, he wished for the blissful ignorance of two minutes ago. 

"Jesse, I have a feeling that Overwatch will be there. They will have to respond to this," Genji continued, "Come on! Get dressed! They'll need us."

"Genji," McCree said, "I can't. I can't go back just yet."

Genji turned to face him. With his helmet on, McCree could not read his expression. Was he angry? Disappointed? "I never knew you to be so selfish."

"The world don't want me. They don't want Overwatch neither. Overwatch died with Amari 'n Morrison 'n Reyes, and folks want it to stay dead."

"I don't understand you," Genji snapped at him, "I know you want to go. I know you want to be with Overwatch again. Overwatch was home to you."

"It was,' McCree agreed, "But there's so much more to it than that. I can't just go back to the way it was back then."

"So you won't come?" Genji asked. He inhaled, the tension in his stance going slack. "I understand you are hurt by how you perceive the people turned on us. If you don't wish to join the recall, that is not a decision I can make for you. But I hope that you will change your mind someday. Overwatch needs you."

Before McCree could think of a response, Genji was gone, shutting the door behind him. The whole exchange left McCree feeling whiplash. He was now alone, in a country where he couldn't speak the language or even read the alphabet. The loose bond he had been forming with Genji felt severed. Within a matter of hours, Genji would be fighting Null Sector in the streets of Paris. And if he was right, if Overwatch did show themselves, who else would be there? 

"What would you do in my shoes, Boss?" McCree asked the empty room, but, of course, there was no Gabriel Reyes to answer him. He laid back onto his futon, pulling the fan closer to his face. It wasn't that he didn't want to go back. In fact, he'd love to get a big, enthusiastic hug from Lena again, to play card games with Winston during down time in the lab, even just having a bed to go back to each night and a roof over his head would be wonderful. 

He rolled over and grabbed his phone, opening the gallery and touching the first picture of Hanzo he had saved. He stared at those harsh features, feeling almost fondness for the monster. "I understand why you're hidin'," he sighed, "Sometimes that's the easiest thing." Did that make both him and Hanzo cowards? He clenched his teeth and tossed his phone aside. 


	5. Box of Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should add that I believe, in my own headcanon, that Hanamura is actually located closer to Fuji, a little ways from Tokyo. I know that many fans include Hanamura as a part of Tokyo, but I just don't think that's likely. In this fic, I've written Hanamura to be in the Yamanashi prefecture, but I think Shizuoka, or even maybe Nagano or Kanagawa, are also more likely locations for Hanamura than Tokyo for just a whole bunch of reasons. That's just, idk, my personal thoughts! Definitely feel free to lmk if you have other thoughts about this :) 
> 
> Beppu, which is mentioned in this chapter, is located in the Oita prefecture. If you all want to see the real-world locations of all these places, check out this map of Japan's prefectures - 
> 
> https://www.japan-guide.com/list/gif/1002_01.gif

About six hours later, McCree found himself stepping off the train and onto the platform in Beppu. He hadn't looked forward to navigating the train lines without Genji's help, but most of the signs had been in a combination of English and Japanese, so it ended up being just like the subway anywhere else in the world, except cleaner and better organized. Okay, so maybe not like anywhere else in the world. 

Beppu was a serene and picturesque city, surprisingly urban, and nestled in rolling crests of verdant mountains, facing out over a bay of the same name, busy with fishing boats. His internet search had told him that Beppu was famous for its geothermal hot springs, and he found that he could see steam rising up from the natural baths all throughout the city, leaving hazy streaks across the dusky orange and pink sky. 

On his phone, McCree had saved the ryokan's address from their website, which had been available in both Japanese and English. He hopped into a cafe across the street from the station, connected to their wifi while he refueled with a coffee, and requested a ride. The driver who pulled up front some five or ten minutes later was an Omnic who did speak a little English, although his accent was thick. 

"Ryuuza Ryokan. Very famous. Very beautiful," he said.

"Oh, really?" McCree muttered, not really interested in conversation. 

Indeed, it was. The ryokan in Hanamura had been wedged between other buildings on a busy street, was only one floor, and contained just a handful of traditional-style rooms, all arranged around a central garden. Ryuuza Ryokan was a palace in comparison. It was constructed in the same traditional style - wooden with that stately sloped roof - but had more modern touches, such as the many windows and a driveway for cars that wound around the back. There were three stories which must have contained dozens of rooms. The building itself was perched on a hill with dense forest to its back and Beppu Bay spread out before it. In the early dark, McCree was welcomed by the low glow of lights from inside and flickering lanterns illuminating the path to the door. While he couldn't see the baths, their steam surrounded the property in a light fog. Everything looked magical, like some great adventure might begin here. 

A woman in a kimono came from behind the front desk to greet him. He was so busy staring at everything that he barely noticed her. Like many buildings in Japan, there was a recessed entryway several feet wide, where guests' shoes had been left in a neat row. The walls of the lobby were all glass panes, so that one could look out upon the manicured grounds and the bay beyond. Hanging in an alcove was a silk cloth that had been imprinted with the makeup of kabuki actors, leaving an image of their colorful faces. Everything smelled pleasant and earthy. 

"I'm sorry, Miss," he said, "I didn't catch what you said. Do you speak English at all?" He felt so embarrassed to even have to ask, but her face lit up.

"A little!" she said.

"A little" ended up being an understatement. After kicking off his boots and stepping up into the largest pair of guest slippers, which were still smaller than his feet, he crossed to the desk, where she was able to get him checked into a room, the entire conversation in English. Her grasp of the language was so good that he built up the courage to ask her outright, "Is Ms. Shimada here? Shimada Yaeko? I need to speak with her. It's about her family. Her nephews? Uh... great-nephews? Or somethin'? Hanzo and Genji?"

Her smile faltered, he saw. He realized perhaps she hadn't completely understood him, but, before he could think of a better way to express himself, she said, "You wish to see Shimada-san? Is she expecting you?"

"No," he admitted, "But it's about her family. It's real important. If you could tell her that I'm here? About Genji? Hanzo?"

"I will tell her you are here, Mister McCree."

Another women in a kimono emerged to lead him to his room, down a long corridor on the first floor. It was another tatami room, smaller than the one he had shared with Genji, but it had a sliding door that opened onto a private porch facing the bay, and it had a bath room with a real, genuine hot spring inside of it. He wasted no time. He showered thoroughly, rinsing off all the sweat from the day, then jumped right in to the nearly-scalding water. 

Was this right of him? he wondered. While Null Sector attacked Paris, while Genji flew out to aid Overwatch in some serious heroics, was it okay for him to just be lounging in a bath? Hanzo's location simply shouldn't matter anymore, not in the grand scheme of things. "Am I doin' the wrong thing?" he asked the empty bathroom. But he couldn't do the world any good from inside a prison cell either, he told himself. As he soaked and thought, the room phone rang.

McCree leaped from the tub, giving himself a once-over with the towel, and raced barefoot across the tatami to pick up the phone, where it sat on a low table. "Uh, hello?"

"Mister McCree," a soft voice said, "My name is Yaeko Shimada. I have been told that you are looking to speak with me."

Her English was slow and careful but otherwise perfect. McCree was so relieved he could have cheered. Of course he had been prepared to struggle over a translator app in order to speak with her, if necessary, but he was so glad they could just communicate in a shared language. "Yes, Ma'am!" he said, "I need to talk to you about your nephews, Genji and Hanzo."

"Have you eaten, Mister McCree?" she asked.

He'd had a bento box on the train, but something told him not to admit this. "No, Ma'am."

"Then, if you please, meet me upstairs in the South Banquet Hall. I will send someone up to your room to lead you there."

Banquet Hall? McCree's eyes went wide. "Uh, Ma'am, that's real nice o' you, but you really don't have to go through all the trouble."

"I insist," she said, "I haven't heard anything about the boys in many years. It will make me happy to host you."

* * *

"I was never very close to Hanzo," Yaeko began, "But Genji used to come here to visit very often. On holidays, he would bring all his friends from school. He was very popular among his peers, and everyone enjoyed being in his presence."

McCree was surprised to learn this about Genji, whom he had only known as a cold asshole until recently, but he nodded and clumsily lifted another bite of food to his mouth using his chopsticks. Yaeko had been kind enough to have her kitchen serve up a feast for them. There seemed to be a hundred tiny plates spread out before them, piled with things like grilled eel, noodles in cold broth, pickled vegetables, salad of bitter melon, a rainbow of different sashimi, and many more things he could not identify. He was no picky eater; he ate it all with abandon. 

Yaeko, on the other hand, only picked at the food with disinterest. He was amazed by her. In her eighties, he had imagined a frail woman with paper-thin skin. She was anything but. Although she did everything slowly, and although her hands trembled a little, she was still robust for her age. She was a short woman with round, rosy cheeks and sharp, wise eyes. She could have passed for a woman in her fifties, he thought. Her hair had lost all of its color, though, and she wore it pulled up into a silvery-white bun at the top of her head, pinned in place with a costumey hair ornament. 

"Hanzo was groomed from birth to follow in his father's footsteps. It is the Shimada way. My father raised my brother that way, too. Even though it is our tradition, I was never blind to the cruelty of it. Hanzo was not allowed to be a boy. He was scolded for doing things any child did - roughhousing, getting dirty, playing outside. His father did not even permit him to have friends unless their families were considered high enough status. Of course, boys will make friends naturally regardless of wealth or title, but he was never permitted to see them outside of school. So Hanzo was very lonely. It broke my heart to watch him withdraw more and more. By the time he was a teenager, he seemed barely human. I saw him very little after that. But don't misunderstand me, Mister McCree. He was a good boy."

"Please," McCree said, "Call me Jesse, Ma'am."

"He was a good boy, _Jesse_ ," she corrected herself with a smile, "My heart aches for him still, so much. His parents loved him, they were obsessed with him, really, but they did not show him affection. Not that I ever witnessed."

McCree thought of the old photograph he had seen of the two brothers together. Hanzo had looked unhappy, his expression mean and joyless. Beside him, Genji, with his aura of typical teenage spirit, had seemed like he came from another world. "So their parents weren't as hard on Genji?" he asked. 

"They were the opposite with Genji," she said, "And that was equally as destructive for him. He had no discipline, no guidance. My nephew, their father, simply did not care what path Genji chose for himself. He was allowed to do anything he wanted. I imagine that led somehow to his mysterious death."

McCree choked on a mouthful of termpura okra, chasing it down with a sip of iced Jasmine tea. "Well, Ma'am," he said, pulling at his beard, "That's part o' the reason I'm here... Genji... well, Genji ain't dead."

Yaeko's sweet, gentle face became very serious. "This is a cruel joke to play on an old woman," she told him, "I saw his limbs. I attended his funeral."

"Well, Ma'am," he said, struggling to find the right words, "Those were his limbs, for sure, but... He survived. Ten years ago, Overwatch saved him. He's got limbs built like mine." At this, he raised his prosthetic arm and clenched and unclenched the fingers for her. She reached forward, taking his hand in her tiny own. Her deep-set black eyes began to fill with tears. 

"Do you have proof?" she whispered, "This is very hard to believe... I never had children of my own, but after my brother died, his family became like my own. I love Genji like a grandson."

"I ain't got proof right now," he said, looking away from her wet eyes, "You just gotta believe me. He's on a plane right now, right this second, or else I'd call him and let him talk to you. I can leave you his phone number. It's just... he don't look the way you remember him. He's mostly metal now. I reckon he hasn't come around because he doesn't wanna scare you. To protect you, y'know? So you can remember him the way he was, instead o' the way he is."

She released his hand and pulled herself to her feet. "I need a moment, Jesse. Please excuse me." She bowed low at the waist and slipped out of the room, her kimono hissing as it trailed behind her across the tatami. 

McCree sighed and looked down at his food. He resumed eating, but his heart wasn't in it anymore. Everything tasted a little more bland. Again, he questioned if he was doing the right thing. Telling some eighty-something year old woman that her long-dead great-grand-nephew or whatever was living as a cyborg filled him with guilt, as though he was the one who'd done it to Genji in the first place. Why was he here, accepting this woman's hospitality? He didn't care one way or another about Hanzo. All he selfishly wanted was the rush of adrenaline he got from a mission, from having a purpose. 

He should go, he realized. Back to... where? 

Paris.

No. Not Paris. Anywhere but Paris.

But before he could make a decision, Yaeko came back into the room, carrying a cardboard box that was half as big as she was. McCree jumped to his feet and rushed to take it from her. "Let me give you a hand with that, Ma'am."

They sat on the tatami with the box between them, and Yaeko began to unpack its contents. "I thought that you might want to see these things," she said, "It is all that remains of Hanzo's and Genji's past."

McCree held his breath, bracing himself. Something significant was about to happen in this room, of that he was now certain. 

The first things that she took out were two stacks of cards, each wrapped with a ribbon. She unraveled the first bundle and passed it to him. "It is a tradition here to send cards to friends and relatives to celebrate New Year's. The boys have each sent me one since they were old enough to write their names."

He looked at the cards, one by one, studying the passing of time in the changes of handwriting. He couldn't read the characters, but they went from scribbled, messy scratches on the paper to delicately printed kanji as the years moved closer and closer to the present. A few in the middle contained shoddy sketches of Japanese cartoon characters done in colored pencils. "These must be Genji's?" he ventured. He looked up to meet her weeping eyes, and she nodded in response.

How would Genji feel, to know that McCree had held these cards in his hands? How would he feel to know his great-aunt still even had them in her possession, saved like a priceless treasure? Would this be a violation of his privacy? Or would the new Genji not care about what McCree found here, as long as it lead to finding Hanzo? 

Yaeko passed him the second stack, Hanzo's. McCree expected to find fewer of them, assuming that Hanzo would have resisted something as sentimental as sending cards in the mail, but it seemed that Hanzo had continued into adulthood. The jump in handwriting gave McCree whiplash. There was only a few years of childlike, clumsy handwriting before it became a tight, precise calligraphy. None of them contained doodles like Genji's. McCree tried to guess what a young Hanzo might look like, even younger than the teenager in the photograph he had seen, but it was nearly impossible to imagine any child with such severe, angry eyes. 

McCree passed each stack of cards to Yaeko, who bound them with the ribbon once more with reverence, like this was some ritual. She set them beside her and reached back into the box, pulling out a clear file with some wide-eyed, cute cartoon character of a dog on it. It looked to McCree like the kind of thing an elementary school girl might keep her homework in. Yaeko took out several loose pieces of paper, which she examined with curiosity, as though she didn't remember what they were and why she have saved them. 

"Oh!" she gasped, bringing a hand to her smiling lips, "Yes, these."

She laid them out over the tatami. They were clippings from Japanese newspapers. McCree studied the columns of tiny, printed kanji and wished he could read what they said. Many of them had photographs with the articles. McCree leaned over them, searching for what might be Genji's or Hanzo's faces. All of the pictures were of children, usually groups of children. Only one kid was consistently recurring - a scrawny boy with an impish look in his dark eyes. His thick hair was nearly black, and he wore it pulled back in a golden ribbon. McCree felt those eyes looked more like what he knew about Genji, but Hanzo was the one who wore his hair up that way. "Who's this?" he asked her.

"Hanzo," she said. She tapped the clippings, one by one, and explained each of them, "This is from when Hanzo painted something in school and won an award, and the painting got featured on Hanamura City buses! And this one is from the year he played the taiko drum at a summer festival. Here, his class worked to make one thousand paper cranes to mail to the Children's Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. Oh, look! He made me one, too! I had nearly forgotten..."

Yaeko reached back into the box and offered McCree a paper crane that seemed impossibly small and delicate. The paper was bright red, with a floral pattern in bold primary colors. The folds were so tight, so neat, that it looked as though the paper had been made for this shape. He almost didn't want to take it from her, because he was so afraid that he would damage it in some way. He balanced it in his metal palm so that he could brush his fingertips of living flesh over it. How had Hanzo gone from donating origami as a symbol of peace to cutting off his brother's limbs? 

"Oh, this one is my favorite! Look! The boy beside him is Genji!" Yaeko's attention had returned to the newspaper articles, and she gestured with her hand to a photograph, "Hanamura held a public tea ceremony event, and the boys served tea to tourists!"

There was Hanzo, perhaps ten, wearing a formal kimono of blue and gold with an intricate cloud pattern on the sleeves. Beside him was Genji, his brows and hair thick and messy, his eyes mischievous. He was in a pastel green kimono with yellow and white patterns of flowers and birds. McCree set the crane down so that he could lift the newspaper off the floor, bringing the picture closer to his eyes. He could hardly believe what he was looking at. He would have loved to bring this back to show everyone else at Overwatch. He knew Angela would get a kick out of it, but Genji would probably kill him if he showed a single soul. 

"My nephew, Sojiro, pushed the boys very hard, but Genji had no patience for things like tea ceremony. No patience for anything, for that matter. His grades were not good enough to even attend the same schools that Hanzo did. But he was always sweet, always thinking of me. Look, he always sent me artwork - " Yaeko began to pull drawings and grade-school craft projects from the box. McCree ignored the tears rolling down her cheeks out of politeness. She stopped suddenly, "Jesse, I apologize. You came here to speak with me about something, and I've taken up all your time with these silly memories of mine."

"No, it's okay, Ma'am," he assured her, "I've enjoyed seein' these things."

She took both of his hands in her own, "Thank you, Jesse, for bringing news of Genji to me. Do you think he will speak to me if I were to call him?"

He nodded, "I reckon he would." And if Genji didn't, he'd fly across the planet himself and hold a gun to the bastard's head until he did. Yaeko deserved a phone call. She deserved the whole world. "There's one more thing, Miss Yaeko, but I don't want to upset you."

The smile fell from her face. 

"Hanzo's gone missin'. He disappeared a couple weeks ago. Genji asked me to help track him down."

"So you came here?" Yaeko asked, still gripping McCree's hands tight, "You must realize, I have no way to help you. I haven't seen Hanzo in many years. In fact, I believe the last time we saw each other was at Genji's funeral. But if there's any way that you believe I can help your search, please let me know."

"I definitely will, Ma'am," McCree said. He had dreaded that she might be as clueless as he was, but hearing her say it aloud completely deflated the magic of this moment. He pulled his hands away from hers and began to dig in is pocket, "The only thing Genji n' I found that seemed out of place was these things."

He held the scales out to her, expecting her to look puzzled, but instead a look of the most visceral horror twisted every feature. "No..." she whispered, and she brought a hand up to cover her face, "Jesse, where did you find those?"

"Shimada Castle," he said, "Why? Do you know what they are?" 

She shook her head and reached to take one from McCree's outstretched hands, "I do know what they are. They are something terrible."

"What?"

"What do you guess they are?" she asked, holding the thing to her chest.

"Scales?" he suggested.

"That is exactly what they are. But from what? Do you have a guess?" 

McCree shook his head, "No, Ma'am. I thought maybe a snake or a fish, but they're too big."

She squeezed her eyes closed, and in that moment she looked very small and frail and old. "They are dragon scales."

McCree almost burst out laughing. He threw a hand to his mouth to cover his grin. Was this lady insane? "D-Dragon?" he repeated, "And dragons are... _real?_ "

"I know how crazy it sounds," she said, and when her eyes opened again, she was crying harder than ever before, tears dripping down the front of her kimono, "But the Shimada family has always believed so. Our family crest is a dragon, you know? You must have seen the motifs all over Hanamura."

"Yes, ma'am, but..." He couldn't think of a kind way to tell her that she sounded out of her mind. 

"Give me one moment," she said.

Once more, she disappeared out of the sliding door and down the hall, leaving McCree alone with the food and the box of mementos. There was one single thing left inside of it - a black book, bound in leather or faux-leather, with kanji embossed on its spine. He wanted to open it and look at its contents, but he respected Yaeko too much to do that. If she wanted him to see it, she would show him. At the very least, he owed her that. 

Instead, McCree went back to the table and poured himself more sake, which had been cold initially, but now was room temperature as it hit the back of his throat. He swallowed several mouthfuls of it, his mind unusually blank. The situation was too strange for him to be able to react to. A dragon? Did she take him for a fool, or was this something that she - a seemingly sensible and incredibly successful woman - genuinely believed? 

When Yaeko returned, she carried another box. This one was much smaller, made of dark lacquered wood, with a dragon painted in gold across the lid. She knelt at the table beside McCree and pushed aside the dishes and bowls to make space before setting the box down between them. When she opened the lid, McCree's jaw dropped.

"Holy shit..." he muttered, too stunned to mind his language. 

Yaeko took the object from the box and turned it, this way and that, so it caught the lamplight. It was a scale, almost exactly like the ones McCree had found, but a little smaller, a little thicker, and in a vibrant orange color. 

"Where'd you get that?" he asked. 

"Well, it belonged to my father," she explained, "He told me that it was his uncle's, many years before I was born."

"Where'd your uncle get it?" 

"You misunderstand me," she said, "It was a scale from his uncle's body. According to family legend, he became a dragon himself."

McCree found himself questioning her sanity. Maybe in her old age, she had some sort of dementia? He took one of the blue scales and held it up to compare to the orange. It really was incredible, how similar they were. 

"I know how strange it sounds. My father told me that his uncle was cursed."

"Cursed? A curse that turns a man into a dragon?"

"You think I am insane, don't you?" Yaeko said with a sad smile, "Many members of the Shimada bloodline are gifted with spirit dragons. I assume we all might have this gift, but it takes careful training of one's soul to summon one. I never could. My grandfather, though, and his brother - they both could. According to the stories that have been passed down to me, his brother, my great-uncle, could summon two of them. I suppose I'm not making a good case for my sanity."

"I've seen Genji do it. He can summon one."

Yaeko replaced the scale in its box, where it rested in the folds of silk lining. "Jesse, my uncle was a man with a weak spirit. He was withdrawn, unhappy, and he loved no one, not even himself. They sat that his two dragons were too much for him. They overpowered him, and he became a dragon himself."

"Did your dad see his uncle as a dragon?" McCree asked. 

"He did not," she said, "I know how it sounds, but his brother died after the transformation. It happened so fast, in a matter of weeks. He just became weaker and weaker. At first, he was mostly still himself in his head, but with each passing day, his mind became less and less human. His wife had sent for my father to come and help them, but by the time my father arrived, she had been devoured and his brother was dead. He found scales in the house, and great claw marks in the walls, and if not for these things, he might have never believed the stories."

"So you think Hanzo's a dragon, too?" McCree asked. 

"Look at the scales you have, Jesse. Look at the scale I have. Hanzo is in tremendous danger."

"Ma'am, not to sound rude, but... how could a whole dragon hide in a country like Japan?"

"He must have found somewhere," she said, "We have to locate him. If we can't, he will die. Or he could lose his humanity entirely and begin attacking innocent people. This situation is dangerous."

"If we do find him, what do we do? Is there a way to reverse the curse?" he wondered. 

Yaeko looked distraught. McCree reached to place the blue scale in the box alongside the orange one, and then he closed the lid. "I don't know," she admitted, drawing the box close to her chest, "I really do not know. The Shimada family has mostly died out. All of our ancestral lore has been lost. But perhaps it could help to remind him of his humanity, to somehow strengthen his human spirit so that he can keep the dragon in check. That is the only idea I have."

A silence fell upon the room - Yaeko thinking about Hanzo, McCree thinking about how crazy this all sounded. Even if he was willing to suspend his disbelief, then he still had no further clues as to where Hanzo might be at that moment. 

"Here. Take this." Yaeko lifted the black book from the box, offering it to McCree, "I will want it back, because it is my most precious possession, but I thought you might like to look at it."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"I'd like you to stay here," Yaeko said, "For another day or two. It will give me some time to do some research. In the meantime, feel free to take advantage of our amenities, order room service, and do not be shy to request anything of my staff. I will cover the cost of your stay, in exchange for how you have helped my family."

"Ma'am, I couldn't accept that much hospitality," he protested.

"Nonsense. You have given me something priceless, Jesse McCree. You have given me my Genji back, and you have given me hope."


	6. Spirits Raised, Spirits Broken

Once again, McCree was jerked out of a peaceful, deep sleep by the shrill ring of his phone. Full of good food and good liquor, he had collapsed into his futon as soon as he left his dinner with Yaeko, and it had been his plan to finally get a full night's sleep. Groaning and pawing at his face, crusty with dried drool, McCree scrambled across the room to answer the call. The number displayed was neither Genji's nor Yaeko's. Who could possibly be calling this number at almost six o'clock in the morning?

“Hello?”

A shriek from the other end of the line nearly burst his ear drums. “Jesse! Jesse McCree! You actually answered! He answered!” There was tremendous noise in the background – voices all raised in a cacophony.

McCree took his phone with him across the room and slid open the door to the balcony. Outside, the morning sunlight glinting off the bay was blinding. He winced and dropped into one of the bamboo chairs, drawing in a breath that smelled of the sea. “Who is this?” he asked, “ _Lena?_ ”

“ _Who is this?_ Have you forgotten me already, Jesse?” she laughed, “Of course it's Lena! It's all of us!”

At this, he heard a deep voice bellow, “Give me the phone!”

 _Reinhardt,_ McCree thought, and his mouth stretched from ear to ear in a smile.

“No! No!” Lena scolded, and for a moment there was shuffling and the sound of incoherent conversations. McCree longed to be there. In spite of his uncertainties, he'd give anything to see all those familiar faces again. Before he could think too much about what this meant for him and his search for Hanzo, Lena was back, “Everyone says hi, Jesse!”

“Everyone?” 

“Oh, Jesse! You just need to see Brigitte! She's so big now, you'd hardly recognize her! Oh! Brigitte says _hi_!”

“Tell her I said hi, too.”

“He says _hi_ , Brigitte! No! You can't talk to him! Why aren't you here, Jesse?” she snapped, her tone turning sharp with anger, “It isn't the same without you. I nearly could have killed Genji for letting you stay back in Japan! Oh, you should have seen us, Jesse! We were brilliant! And the people – Jesse, they _loved_ us! They were so chuffed to see us in action! Overwatch is back!”

“They were glad to see you?”

“Of course they were! It was brilliant! They were taking our pictures and cheering and everything!”

“No one was mad?” McCree asked. 

“They weren't mad, no, but... well, Winston's dealing with some angry calls from the U.N. right now. It doesn't matter. We're going to save the world! Now, when will you get your arse over here, Jesse McCree?”

McCree sighed. “Lena, you've gotta know I'm a criminal now. I ain't wanted there.”

“No one has to know! Not yet, anyway! Plus, I'm sure Winston'll handle it. He's spent ages studying international law.”

“Maybe...”

Lena groaned, “Maybe isn't good enough! We need you!”

“Well, right now I'm helpin' Genji with somethin,” McCree said, “In fact, is Genji there? Can I talk to him?”

“Jesse! We haven't spoken in ages and you want me to just give the phone to Genji?”

She was right, and his sudden guilt was suffocating. For years, he had dropped off the grid and not reached out to a single one of them. For all they knew, he had been dead. It was wrong of him. He should have been there for these people, whom he had once considered almost like family. “I didn't mean it that way, Lena. You know I'm glad t'hear your voice. How've ya been?

“I'll fill you in on all the juicy details once you get over here,” she said, “Come on, Jess. The family's getting back together again. It's not going to be the same without you!”

McCree hadn't realized how emotional he was becoming, but he couldn't hold it back any longer; he allowed the cool tears to drip down his cheeks, where they caught in his beard. He stared out over the water, at the mist rising off the waves, the pink morning sky, and the scattered fishing boats in the distance. “I have to finish this,” he told her. He hoped she couldn't tell from his voice that he was crying.

“All right, Jess. Here. Let me fetch Genji.”

“Hey, Lena?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you. Give everyone else my love, too. And Emily.” He'd never said that before to any of them, although it was a feeling he'd always had inside of him. His grip on the phone was so tight that, had he been holding it in his metal hand, it probably would have shattered.

“Oh, Jess. I love you, too, but I'm not going to give _anyone_ your love. You can tell them all in person when you come back home!”

There was a new eruption of background noise, and he heard Reinhardt shout, “What? Not me?”

Then Genji was on the line, “Jesse?” he said. His voice, in those two syllables, sounded so light and happy that McCree couldn't help but smile as he cleared away the damp streaks beneath his eyes.

“Guess where I am,” McCree said.

“Paris?” Genji asked, “Gibraltar? We're about to fly back now, as soon as Lena gets off the phone with you.”

McCree laughed, “No, hate to crush yer hopes, Genji, but I ain't anywhere near there. I'm in a city called Beppu.”

“Beppu? Why?" he sounded surprised, "That place is a tourist trap. I used to have an aunt who lived there. Well, she was technically my great aunt.”

“That's exactly why I'm here, actually. I'm at her hotel.”

For several seconds, there was no answer, although McCree could still here the chatter of people in the background. “Genji? You still there?”

“Yes. How is she?” Genji asked. The emotion was thick in his voice, and McCree hated that Genji had to find out this way, much as he hated that Yaeko had to find out last night that Genji had been alive all this time.

“She's surprised to hear you ain't dead, that's for sure.”

“So you told her?”

“Yeah, I had to. She's gonna help me find Hanzo,” McCree said.

“She said she would help you?"

“Yeah. I spent all of last night with her. She thinks... Hell, this sounds ridiculous. She thinks he's been turned into a dragon.”

There was a tense quiet through the phone line. McCree hated that he had left his cigars in his pants pocket inside, and he thought about slipping back in to grab one. “I remember when I was young, she showed me a thing in a box that she claimed to be a dragon scale,” Genji said, “Is she alright, Jesse? I mean... she doesn't seem to have dementia, perhaps?”

“Naw. She showed me the thing, too, but she seems real together. Better than most women her age. I'm goin' along with it for now. Might as well. Ain't got no other leads.”

“Jesse, you really do not have to,” Genji said, “Just come back. We can use Overwatch's resources to try and locate him.”

That did seem like the most rational option. If Overwatch was getting back together, as it seemed to be, then soon they'd have all the technology that McCree had longed for during this investigation – phone and credit card records, police databases, access to security cameras, and a hundred other things he probably didn't even know about. But he said, “Let me humor her a bit longer. She's nice, Genji. She loves you. She wants you to call her.”

“I will. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“If you don't Genji, I'll -”

“Do not worry, Jesse. I will call her. I want to,” Genji reassured him, “I'm just... I'm very tired. Will you be coming back here, after you're done with her?”

“I'll think about it,” McCree sighed, shaking a hand through his hair.

“That is all that I can ask for,” Genji said, “And thank you. You've been a good friend to me and to Hanzo.”

McCree winced. He wasn't doing this for Hanzo, although he wasn't about to fight with Genji about that. “Thanks. You, too, Genji.”

After they hung up, McCree was a mess of emotions. He sat on the balcony in his underwear smoking cigar after cigar, watching the city wake up all around him. He should have expected one of them to badger his number out of Genji; he should have steeled himself for the inevitable conversation he would have to have. Hearing Lena's sweet, uplifting voice and the deep thunder of Reinhardt's in the background, as well as all the laughter and chatter of the others – it all made the recall feel real for the first time.

He called the front desk for breakfast and the wifi password. Picking at his meal of broiled fish, steamed vegetables, pickles, rice, and miso soup, he caught up on the news regarding what had happened in Paris. He learned that Null Sector had launched an attack unlike anything seen before, their countless Omnic foot soldiers lead by one of gargantuan size. As of now, the death count was uncertain, but estimated to be in the thousands. Authorities seemed to be in agreement – if Paris city police had no evacuated so quickly and if Overwatch had not shown up, the tragedy would have been insurmountable. Hundreds of thousands of people would have lost their lives.

In the photographs, Paris was hardly recognizable, but the most alarming of all was at the page's head – all lined together, battleworn but victorious, were his friends. Winston stood in the center, taking up nearly half the frame with his massive body. On his right was Brigitte, although Lena had been right – McCree could barely believe that this young woman was her, for she had grown so tall and beautiful. Genji stood at her side, and floating just over their shoulders were Echo and Angela, who looked like she had not aged a day. On the gorilla's other side was Lena herself, looking as sprightly as ever, with Reinhardt towering behind her – he was so aged that it made McCree ache inside. What might the fallen look like now, had their lives been spared? Jack Morrison and Ana Amari had both been almost completely silver-haired the last time McCree had seen them. Would his boss Gabriel Reyes be now, too? There was another face in the photograph, one that McCree didn't recognize. She was a round-faced woman in glasses, perhaps Chinese. McCree wondered what branch of Overwatch she had worked for. It amazed him. People really were answering the recall. Overwatch was in the paper again.

McCree took screenshots of the photograph and accompanying article to show Yaeko later. He had dinner plans with her that night – another feast in the banquet hall, he hoped - and he thought she would like to see what Genji looked like now. But what could he do to pass the time until then? He supposed that he could try to sleep again, or maybe check out the public baths and saunas on the other side of the ryokan, but he knew that if he was left alone with his thoughts right now, as shaken as he was, he might end up making a decision he would come to regret.

It was then that he remembered the book that Yaeko had given him last night. That would be the perfect distraction.

Before sitting down to read, he took another long bath, then spent a while grooming himself with all of the complimentary toiletries before throwing on the complimentary robe, which was made for a much shorter man. Clean, with his beard trimmed, teeth brushed, and face moisturized (the package, to his alarm, had read _Placenta Cream_ ), he returned to the balcony and fell into a chair, throwing his feet up into the second chair beside him. When he turned to the first page, he was surprised to see no words, but, instead, a photograph.

“Of course,” he murmured to himself. This was a photo album. The size of it, and the thickness of the pages, should have been a dead giveaway.

That first picture was of a chubby, red-faced newborn swaddled in a white blanket in a hospital bassinet. McCree only glanced at it for a second before moving on, because he wasn't sure what this baby picture had to do with his search for Hanzo. With each page he flipped, the baby grew older. It was obvious that his family adored him. There were pictures of him in tiny traditional outfits at festivals, his first steps, playing in the sand of the zen garden at Shimada Castle, and even one of him crying in the arms of a sumo wrestler. It wasn't until McCree saw the baby, now a toddler, with his parents that he knew the significance of this photo album. At Tokyo Disney Sea, the boy was strapped into a stroller with his mother on one side and father on the other. The woman, wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, had delicate bone structure and was very small, with thick, dark brows and sleek ebony hair that hung down to her waist. The man with her was stocky, his expression serious and facial features so sharp and angular that he looked out of place in an amusement park. McCree grinned. There was no one else this couple could be but Genji's and Hanzo's parents.

Which meant that this child McCree had been looking at pictures of had to be Hanzo. There was no sign, in that perfectly round face, of the man that this baby would grow up to be. He seemed a quiet but happy boy, although it was hard to make that judgment from pictures alone. McCree began to pay more attention. There was a photograph of him, perhaps two or three, at a petting zoo, sandwiched between his parents on a bench with a lion cub draped across his lap,and he looked delighted. Another was taken at a teahouse, where he was posing with geisha so beautiful that they looked like living dolls. Here he was in front of Ryuuza Ryokan, and the woman holding his hand was unmistakably Yaeko. Thirty years younger, her hair was only just beginning to gray, and she stood a little taller, her back less hunched over, but her soft face and kind eyes were the same.

At the sight of her, he felt his heart rate slow and the chaos of his thoughts begin to unravel. McCree had not realized that he had been sitting there tense and uneasy this whole time. He couldn't abandon his search for Hanzo. Not yet. As tempting as it might be to give up and let Overwatch take over, he owed Yaeko better than that. He wanted to put forth every ounce of his effort for her sake.

When he flipped the page again, there was Genji. The shift between brothers was so sudden it was jarring; there were no photographs of their pregnant mother to prepare him. At birth, he was longer and skinnier than Hanzo had been, and his face was all knotted up as he bawled in each image. First, in another bassinet. Then in his mother's arms, and again when he was being introduced to his new big brother, who looked uncomfortable with all of the newborn's howling. McCree couldn't help but laugh. He even took a picture of the photograph so that he could taunt Genji about it afterwards.

“God damn,” McCree said, smiling and shaking his head, “Genji'll kill me.”

There the family was at a shrine. The background was cluttered with other families, all in a rainbow of traditional clothing. Their mother held Genji to her chest, and she looked stunning in a kimono of gold, green, black, and white with a pine tree motif. At her side stood her husband, in a kimono of more muted blues and grays, holding the hand of a sour-faced Hanzo, no more than five years old, and wearing a kimono of navy and gold with a pattern of clouds at the hem.

A family portrait. Sojiro Shimada sat in the foreground with Hanzo in his lap, father and son clad in matching demure suits. They also wore matching expressions of disdain, which was amazing for a boy who probably hadn't even lost his first tooth yet. Behind them stood the lovely wife and mother, holding Genji in her arms. The arrangement of the photograph struck McCree as significant. Hanzo and Sojiro in the front, Genji and the mother in the back because they mattered less, because the family was expected to be held together by Hanzo and Sojiro. The other two were almost accessories or props.

Then there came page after page of photographs of Genji. Still in diapers, sitting on the floor and covered head-to-toe in what appeared to be chocolate sauce. Crawling on the floor with a black cat beside him, the cat's tail in his mouth. And so many selfies taken by his mother, with him in her arms. He was always smiling, a sharp contrast from the pictures of him as a screaming newborn, and she always kept him in adorable outfits.

McCree flipped through all of these, looking for a picture of the brothers together, but by the time he spotted Hanzo again, Genji had grown into a scrawny, long-limbed child with messy hair. Sitting at a ramen shop with their legs dangling off stools. Running barefoot through a dark garden with sparking fireworks in their hands. Catching bugs with toy nets on a bright summer day. Then a picture of them standing at the gates to a school in matching uniforms, both wearing oversized black backpacks, and Genji in a ridiculous yellow hat. He snapped a photo of this picture with his phone, too.

As McCree continued, watching the years of Genji's and Hanzo's lives pass before his eyes, there was something that he couldn't fail to notice. There were so many photographs of Genji at birthday parties, playing in groups of rowdy friends, and posing with his mother. His knees were always scraped, or his teeth were missing, or there were stains on his clothes. He looked so happy, though, and he _adored_ his mother. Hanzo, on the other hand...

McCree took a deep breath.

Hanzo was nothing like his animated, wild little brother. There were no pictures of him with friends, or playing, or even with either of his parents. It was hard to even believe the boys were in the same family. Here he was, stone-faced in full kendo gear, with his mask in one hand and stick in the other. Or here, at a practice range, drawing back a child-sized bow with a look of intense concentration. There was a photograph of him kneeling on a stage, playing a small shamisen. Later, there came matching pictures of Genji. One of Genji in kendo gear, although his mask was pulled off to reveal a chipped-tooth grin. In another, he stood at the same archery range, although he was playfully aiming at the photographer.

It bothered McCree, although it took him a while to put a finger on it. Like a mustang, Hanzo's spirit had been broken. Over the years, as evidenced in the pictures laid out in the album, the wildness had been drained from his boy. His smiles were rare and tight-lipped. His posture was never at ease.

Then there were no more pictures of Hanzo at all. The photo album continued on without him, just snapshots of Genji as if he had been born an only child. Someone who didn't know better might even have thought the elder brother had passed away before reaching puberty. Genji in a pool, throwing up two fingers to give a peace sign to the camera. Genji getting his green belt in a karate dojo. Genji, Genji, Genji. Many of these, Yaeko had written something beneath in her elegant calligraphy with a brush pen, but McCree couldn't read the characters.

At the back of the book there was one final picture of Hanzo, which caught him off guard. He was a young man here, posing in some kind of ceremonial outfit of white and gold. His hair was long and pulled back into a golden ribbon. He had a handsome, chiseled face, although his eyes were numb and haunted. He seemed to look out past the camera, meeting McCree's gaze. There was a caption beneath this one. McCree raised his phone to take a picture of the handwriting, which he translated using the app.

_Hanzo's Coming of Age Day._

McCree rested his fingers against the film over the photograph. He wished that he could reach through, into the image, and touch Hanzo in the flesh. This beautiful, tortured young man had been crying out for help his entire life. His family had certainly had good intentions for him, and perhaps had even thought they were doing him right by raising him the way they had, but all they had done was ruin him.

“I will find you,” he promised Hanzo, and he shut the photo album with a sigh.


	7. Loyalty, Control, and Honor

Gray clouds rolled in that afternoon and, with them, brought the start of the rainy season. McCree was glad for it. The downpour made the temperature more bearable, although the humidity was now so much worse. There would be some kind of conference or festival in town that weekend, and Ryuuza Ryokan came alive, despite the glum weather. Through the thin walls, McCree could hear countless slippered footsteps moving back and forth in the hall outside his room and the chatter of distant voices in a language he did not know. He met Yaeko for dinner in a private room on the ryokan's third floor, a much more intimate setting than the large banquet hall where they had spoken the night before.

“I'm sorry, Jesse,” she apologized to him, “I don't have much time to spend with you, but I wanted to show you what I have found so far.”

“Thank you for sparin' time for me, ma'am,” he replied, “I'm glad to see you.” Indeed, he was surprised she hadn't canceled on him entirely. There were dozens of new guests, and he was sure she had no time to entertain him.

The first bit of business was returning the photo album to her. He was reluctant to do so. Holding that book of pictures in his hands had made him feel connected to Hanzo in a way he didn't understand. He had the strangest urge to steal one of the pictures, but the idea had filled him with shame. How could he take anything from this woman? In fact, if he had asked, he was sure she would have gladly allowed him to keep one photograph, but the thought of requesting that seemed embarrassing. What need did he have for a photo of Hanzo? And at the end of the day, this album was all she had left of her family.

“They're amazing boys, aren't they?” she said, holding the album to her chest and stroking her hands over the leather binding.

He wanted to laugh, but he bit his tongue. Hanzo and Genji were not exactly boys, but he wasn't about to argue with her. “They sure are,” he agreed, “You said you found something?”

But Yaeko wouldn't speak to him about business right away; she insisted they eat first. So, for the second night in a row, McCree was treated to an extravagant meal. The courses were brought out to them one at a time, and he struggled to keep track of everything he ate. Each serving was no bigger than a couple of bites, and each looked like a tiny piece of art – a prawn suspended in conger eel jelly, chilled soup of abalone and winter melon, a bowl of egg custard that was savory instead of sweet and filled with roots and mushrooms, a stew of eggplant and crab, and so much more. Almost none of it sounded even close to edible, but when he dug in, out of politeness, he found that each mouthful was a perfect balance of flavors. It was even better than the dinner the night before.

The whole time, Yaeko was very talkative. McCree wondered if she ever had much of an opportunity to use her fluent English. They spoke about the change in weather, the components of each dish they were served, and she informed him that the surge in business was due to an interior decorating convention being held in the city's large convention center. This somehow led her to talking about the decorative alcoves in the rooms of her ryokan. She told him that setting up these alcoves was one of her favorite chores. In the room they currently sat in, there was an artistic arrangement of branches of hydrangea, which Yaeko explained was because the flowers were in season, and above that, on the wall hung a scroll of calligraphy.

“Do you see that scroll?” she asked him, “It was made by an ancestor of mine many hundreds of years ago, a samurai lord named Shimada Ryuzo. His father and mother constructed much of the castle that remains in Hanamura today, although the land has belonged to our family for generations before them. The characters say three words. They are the words that every Shimada heir is taught, three qualities ingrained into them as children to mold them into respectable adults and leaders. _Loyalty. Control. Honor._ ”

“Loyalty, control, and honor,” McCree repeated. These were the traits by which Hanzo had defined himself. Ironic, he thought, since in his opinion, a man who killed his brother lacked all of those things. But something bothered him about this: why had a man whose personal code was loyalty, control, and honor done something so evil? It seemed out of character. He made a mental note to ask Genji about this later.

Only after the last plate, a desert of various in-season fruit, was cleared did Yaeko bring up the search. She had another file with her today, this one covered in pastel sushi with cute faces, and she passed it to him with both hands. “I don't have time to go over these in depth with you tonight. I hope you can forgive me,” she said, “These are notes that I stayed up all night translating. They are places that I believe a dragon could be hidden.”

The file was thick, McCree noticed with a sigh. If he had to look into every single one of these places, he'd be hunting Hanzo for weeks, maybe even months. “You were busy,” he said, trying to sound cheerful about the daunting task ahead of him.

“I know it's not very helpful,” she said, seeing the apprehension in his face, “I only wrote down places that could conceivably hide a dragon, due to both size of the area and the population of the area. If people had seen him, then it would be all over the news.”

“It's plenty helpful, Miss Yaeko,” McCree lied.

“There is one other idea I have. Something I am still researching. If you could stay here another day or two and be patient with me, I think it may be our best lead yet.”

Behind his weak smile, McCree clenched his teeth. Was this right? While Overwatch reunited and the fight for peace began anew, should he really be staying here in some resort spa like a man on vacation? But he nodded and agreed. It was the least that he could do for her sake.

* * *

McCree gave himself two tasks to complete the next day. First, he would call Genji. He wanted to ask about the hanging scroll that Yaeko had showed him, but he also wanted to ask Genji if he had ever called Yaeko. Based on the conversations from the evening prior, McCree assumed Genji still hadn't reached out to his aunt. He intended to give his old friend an earful. The second thing he hoped to accomplish was to sort through Yaeko's file of notes.

“Yes, Jesse. We spoke for hours this afternoon. Did you really call in the middle of the night just to ask that?” Genji said. Through the phone his voice sounded slurred, like he had just woken up. McCree glanced at the time on his phone screen and tried to mentally do the math. It must have been about three or four o'clock in the morning over there, if Genji was at the base in Gibraltar. Numbers had never been his strong point, but counting back, if Genji had called Yaeko during the afternoon Gibraltar time, then.... Yes. It would have been last night. Some time after his dinner with Yaeko. McCree felt relieved.

“I'm sorry for wakin' you up,” McCree said, “I forgot the time difference.”

“It's okay. Thank you, Jesse, for encouraging me to call her. It felt good to hear her voice. I suppose that, as an adult, we all forget the old ties we once had as children.”

“Speakin' of that,” McCree said, “There was one other reason I called you. Before you, y'know, had your – uh – spiritual awakening, or whatever? We never really talked about... well, what happened between you 'n Hanzo? You don't have to give me the details. I just mean... did he hate you or somethin'? Lose his temper, maybe? I'm tryin' to wrap my head around this story.”

“You are asking me why he did this to me?” Genji asked.

“Yeah.”

“We would have to ask him that when we find him,” Genji replied, “But I know some things. I know that, after my father died, Hanzo was meant to become the leader of the Shimada clan. The lieutenants beneath my father, now beneath Hanzo, convinced him that I was a threat to the organization. I had to be taken care of as Hanzo's first act of business.”

“That just doesn't fit...”

“What?”

McCree hadn't realized he had spoken aloud. “Sorry. I was talkin' to myself. I was just sayin'... it doesn't fit the image of Hanzo I'm puttin' together in my head. Yesterday, Yaeko told me – well, let me ask you this: do the words loyalty, control, and honor mean anything to you?”

“Loyalty, control, and honor? Of course I know what they mean,” Genji said. He sounded a little irritated, more like the old Genji whom McCree remembered from Blackwatch. It was obvious he didn't know where McCree was going with this, but then, he said, “Oh... _Chuugi. Mizukara wo rissuru. Meiyo_. Yes. I've never thought about them translated into English before. It is a code by which my father and Hanzo both lived by.”

“That's what I'm sayin'. It don't fit. Why would Hanzo turn on you like that, when he's been trained to be loyal and honorable and all that his whole life?” McCree got to his feet and went to slide open the door to his balcony, letting in a gust of humid air. Outside his cozy, air-conditioned room in the ryokan, the world was draped in fog, and the rain fell in sheets upon the city. It stirred up a powerful aroma of seasalt on the breeze.

“You are not looking at the situation through the right perspective, Jesse. Blood is important, yes, but it is not everything. There is family that we are born into and family that we choose. In the Shimada clan, the boss is like an adoptive father or mother to all subordinates, regardless of their age. It is the boss's responsibility to care for his or her children as if they were truly related by blood. Hanzo was pressured into attacking me in the same way a mother bear might maul an innocent hiker who gets too close to her cub. But Hanzo's views of me were based upon lies and manipulation. He did not want to hurt me, but he felt that he had to. It took me many years to understand this, so I don't expect you to, but, in many ways, Hanzo attacking me – his beloved younger brother gone astray – was the ultimate act of loyalty to the Shimada family.”

“Hm. I see,” McCree grunted. He thought about lighting a cigar, but the wind would have blown the smoke back into his room. 

“Do you?” Genji asked.

“I think so. When he found out that they lied to him, then he realized he had done somethin' dishonorable. He had no loyalty and now no honor either. So he lost his control.”

“I believe so, yes. He lost control of his emotions. He became consumed by hatred, shame, and anger. Emotions are necessary and beautiful things. That is something my teacher Zenyatta believed that resonates deeply in me. A man needs joy and love and fear and sorrow, just as he needs food, water, and shelter to survive. However, in the hands of a man with the deadly skills of my brother, unchecked negative emotions can turn one into a beast. There is a saying that our father frequently quoted - _Any man or monster can master a weapon, but a Shimada masters himself.”_

“Turn one into a beast…” McCree repeated.

“Are you beginning to believe my Aunt Yaeko?” Genji asked. He started to laugh, but in the middle it turned into a mighty yawn.

McCree, who wasn’t even tired, yawned back at him. “She’s about to send me around the country on a dragon hunt,” he said.

“Jesse. Like I told you before, you do not have to humor her like this,” Genji said, “She is old. Her mind and memory are not what they once were.”

“That ain’t true,” McCree snapped, “She’s smart as a whip, Genji. She’s more together up there than I am, I reckon. And you can’t argue there’s no such thing as dragons. I’ve seen your own. Is it so crazy t’think there’s more to ‘em than you know?”

There was a long pause from the other end of the phone call. McCree shut the sliding door to the balcony and wiped the beads of rainwater on his face off on the back of his sleeve. He crossed the room to sit on the floor at the table, where Yaeko’s notes were waiting for him. Genji spoke up: “You are right. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. If you really wish to continue looking for Hanzo - ”

“I do.”

“ – then follow her leads. Just for a little while. I will see what I can do to help from my end. Thank you, Jesse, for helping my family. And thank you for believing in Yaeko and Hanzo. I would not have pulled you into this mess, if I had known what it entailed.”

“’Course, Genji,” McCree said, “Y’know, you're gonna really owe me one.”

Both men were laughing and in improved moods by the time that Genji ended the phone call, hoping to return to sleep. McCree wondered what the morning would bring for Genji. What was his life like now, if he was still on the Gibraltar base? Was it like the daily life of Overwatch before? Of course it wasn’t, without so many of the integral founding members. They were finding a new normal. McCree had never spent much time on Gibraltar before, anyway, so he couldn’t even make a guess.

Now there was only one remaining task for McCree to tackle – this file of papers on the table in front of him. “Well,” he muttered, “here goes nothin’.”

The pages were printed screenshots from websites in Japanese. Yaeko had gone through each one and highlighted parts she deemed important, translating them onto sticky notes that she had pressed onto the back of each paper. McCree flipped through them, reading her notes and then searching the places on his own to see what he could dig up in English. He was surprised. For many generations, the youth of Japan had been leaving their rural homes to move to the ever-growing, increasingly advanced metropolitan areas like Tokyo, Osaka, or Yokohama. They were leaving behind locations that had become deserted all over the country. There were also many places that had been abandoned a century ago, as Japan had made the shift from an island with few resources to one of the most technologically progressive countries in the world. All of these abandoned spots would have been a perfect hiding place for any creature. This meant she had a tremendous range of results. His intention had been to separate them into two piles – good areas to search and less plausible ones – but she seemed to have already weeded through them, and there were very few that he didn’t agree with.

He read about Aokigahara, a forest at the base of Mount Fuji that had earned the nickname of “Suicide Forest.” For decades, people had flocked to this forest to commit suicide in the hundreds each year. The number of bodies recovered had become so devastating that officials no longer publicly released record of the death count. It was not unusual for hikers who ventured off the paths to discover corpses in the trees or camps belonging to those who had come to take their lives. Yaeko included in her translations that the forest was 12 square miles wide, which seemed small, but the suicides kept people on the marked trails. She also noted that the whole area was said to be cursed, haunted by the ghosts of those who have died there.

Yaeko’s notes also said there were more than five hundred abandoned islands of the coast of Nagasaki, a number which had McCree’s mind reeling. She had not included all five hundred of these islands, and, in fact, informed him that the majority of their names and histories had been lost to time, if they had ever had them to begin with. She did have notes on the most well-known ones, such as Hashima Island, also called Gunkanjima. Almost two hundred years ago, the island had been established as a coal mine. It had reached a population of more than five thousand people at its peak, making it one of the most densely populated locations in the world, before the mines were depleted and the island was abandoned. McCree learned from her notes that about seventy years ago, the place became a popular tourist destination and even gained status as a UNESCO World Heritage site, before it was closed again to tourists due to the danger of collapsing buildings and its unstable weather conditions. Gunkanjima was a tiny island, though, as most of these abandoned islands were. It wasn’t even a full square mile in size. But Yaeko believed the intact buildings and the remains of mines might provide cover for a dragon, regardless of his size.

There were many more abandoned islands in Yaeko’s notes, and even a few more abandoned mines, but there were also abandoned amusement parks, abandoned cave systems, and entire abandoned towns. There were also a couple of volcanoes thrown into the stack. McCree hoped, for his own sake, that Hanzo was not there. She had given him nearly fifty pages of notes, and none of them seemed more or less likely than the next. He had no idea what the next step was. It wasn’t as simple as simply making a list and visiting each location. Some of these places would take weeks to investigate thoroughly. Should he tackle the easiest places first? No, he decided. He should group them together, perhaps by prefecture. Maybe he could even pull out some locations that Overwatch could help him search.

Groaning to himself, McCree settled in to get started, although he had no idea what he was doing and felt the whole time he was grasping at straws.

* * *

McCree had no plans to meet with Yaeko that night. She was busy running her own business and leading her own life, and she had already taken so much time for him and for Hanzo that he couldn’t blame her. He spent the day working hard over Yaeko’s notes, breaking only for meals which he took in the ryokan’s restaurant adjacent to the lobby, and once to take a long soak in his bath while watching the news on his phone. He was growing bored and frustrated. Research and planning had never been his thing, and all of this waiting and thinking made him anxious to get out there and actually start looking, but while he waited for her, he had no choice.

So he was surprised when, quite late that evening, he answered a knocking on his door to find Yaeko standing in the hallway looking up at him. She was no longer dressed in one of her lovely kimono of muted colors, and instead was dressed more casually. Her hair was out of its bun, and McCree saw for the first time how long it was; it fell all the way to her waist. In her hands was a few pieces of paper held together with a decorative bicycle-shaped paperclip. As soon as his door was opened, she pushed her way into the room and shuffled over to kneel at his table, where all of her notes were still laid out and now covered in his own chicken scratch.

“Jesse,” she said, her tone urgent, “I have found Hanzo.”

She shoved all the papers to one side of the table and laid out the new sheets she had brought.

“You did?” he dropped, cross-legged, at her side and reached for the new pages, but they had not been translated. The rows of characters swam in front of his eyes.

“Let me read them aloud for you,” she said, taking them from his hands, “I copied these from a forum where people share their personal stories of strange occurrences. Things like ghosts, or possessions, or… hm. What is the word, in English, for legendary creatures from folklore, that some people believe to be real?”

“Urban legends?” McCree suggested, “Cryptids?”

“Yes, perhaps. That sounds right. And alien space ships, too.”

“UFOs?”

“I am not familiar with the word,” she admitted to him, “But the people who believe in these things, when they have sightings or experiences, they will come online to share with others who also believe. Listen, listen. This was from two weeks ago –

_“It was one of my friend’s birthdays, so this past weekend, a group of us went camping. We were on the base of Mount Fuji just outside of Hanamura. At one point in the night, I needed to use a toilet, which meant going out into the woods. I didn’t want the girls with us to be able to watch or hear me, so I went far out into the woods, using my cell phone flashlight. While I was out there, I noticed it was strangely quiet. Normally there are sounds of bugs or something, you know? I had to go out far to be out of ear shot of my friends. That was when I saw it. It was retreating from me, slithering between the trees like a snake, except it was the size of an airplane! Maybe even longer! It was a dragon! I think it was blue, and it had hair all down its back that was white or maybe golden? In the moonlight, it was hard to tell. I never felt threatened. The dragon was running from me, I think. I have a feeling it was watching us from a distance. It was the most magical moment of my life. I know how crazy this sounds. Everyone I tell does not believe me, but I saw it! I swear!_

“Some people commented and asked if maybe she saw a snake yokai. Yokai are our versions of your urban legend monsters. They are supernatural beings that come in many forms, and some are good while others are evil. We do have many snake yokai in our folktales, and they argued that a dragon wouldn’t be found crawling on the ground in a forest. But then, listen to this, Jesse, someone else had their own encounter –

_"I believe you! I don’t think you are crazy. Just the other day, I was sitting outside on my balcony and folding laundry. I live in Hanamura, in the old district, close to Shimada Castle. It was late at night, and it was very cloudy. I could not see any stars. Then the clouds began to thin, and I saw something dart across the sky. I took a photograph of it on my cellphone, but it was moving too quickly, and I was too far away. I’ve attached the picture anyway. I think it was a dragon. And it looked blue to me! I also didn’t get the impression that it was dangerous. You know, the Shimada crest is a dragon. Maybe there is one watching over Hanamura? It’s strange I couldn’t find any mention of it, though, until I saw your post.”_

After finishing this second story, Yaeko pressed a paper into McCree’s hands. He looked down at it and saw a blurry, pixelated photograph of the night sky. The quality was so poor that it was almost laughable, and it reminded McCree instantly of all the hoax images of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster that he had studied online when he was a kid who still believed in things like that. The sky was dark, but the light pollution from the city illuminated just enough that a shape could be made out. Although he couldn’t make out a color exactly, it did have the same shimmery quality of the scales he had found, which made a shiver of uncertainty pass through him. The thing was long, just a streak through the sky, and there was no way to judge its distance from the camera or its size. It easily could have been an insect flying in front of the camera lens. To McCree, this didn’t seem like very convincing evidence.

“So you think I should go back out to Hanamura and check out this forest where this kid was camping?” McCree asked.

“Yes. The boy who made the post included a rough map of where he was. It is possible Hanzo has moved on from this area, but it’s our best starting point,” Yaeko said, “I will pay for your ticket back to Hanamura. I am sorry that you came all the way down here only to be sent back there. And after all this, it could be a waste of your time. He might have moved on by now. He might already be dead. All we can do is try.”

“Ma’am,” McCree said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, making eye contact, and he saw there were tears threatening to spill from her eyes, “Don’t apologize. I’m glad I came down here. I’m glad I met you, and I learned a lot.”

Yaeko sat up on her knees and flung her arms around his shoulders, pulling his head down to rest against her chest in an embrace that was so motherly and full of love. There was a lump in his throat that he tried - and failed - to swallow away as he squeezed her tiny frame back as gently as he could. “Thank you for returning Genji to me,” she said, “I am growing older with each day that passes, and facing death alone was so frightening. I never married. I never had my own children. Who would bury me when I die? And who would take over my business? Now I no longer have to march forward in time with fear hanging over me.”

She was weeping now. He felt her tears drip down her own face and onto his, and it had him on the verge of crying, too. When had he last been hugged like this? And he remembered, with a terrible shooting grief, how he and Fareeha had held each other at her mother’s funeral, almost like it would bring her back as long as they never let go.

“You have already given me so much, and I feel selfish asking you to bring Hanzo back to me as well. No matter what happens,” Yaeko continued, “I am grateful. You will always have a home here in Beppu with me. You are one of my boys, too, now, Jesse. Please stay in touch and do not forget me, even if you must give up your search.”

He laughed and pulled away from her, looking up at the ceiling to try and fight back tears. “Ma’am, I’d never forget you. Not for as long as I live,” he said, “And I ain’t ever givin’ up my search. I won’t have to. I’ll go to Hanamura on the first train tomorrow, and I’ll find him. Just you wait and see.”


	8. A Shrine in the Woods

With plans to make it on the first train, McCree woke with the sun and tried to pay for his stay at the front desk, only to be told he owed nothing. That was not the only favor Yaeko had done for him that morning. There was a packed bag waiting for him which contained extensive camping gear, a portable WiFi device, a map of his destination, an envelope containing one hundred thousand yen, a note wishing him goodbye and good luck, and one more thing...

Hanzo's origami crane.

McCree held the delicate paper in his palm for most of the ride back to Hanamura. He kept imagining the serious-faced boy scowling as his deft fingers made those precise, tight folds. Why had she given this to him? Had she somehow sensed his reluctance to return the photo album to her, and his inexplicable urge to carry one of Hanzo's pictures with him? Surely he was being paranoid; there was no way the woman could have read his thoughts. She had just intended it to be a token to remind him of his mission, and he told himself that it was for the best not to assign any more meaning to it.

It rained constantly as the hours passed by, and it rained still when McCree reached Hanamura Station. He changed to a different line, and a second train took him to a station closer to the mountain's base, although the clouds were so dense he couldn't even see the iconic conical peak towering above him. Even then, he had a bus ride ahead of him to get to the forest's trails, and with each block of progress, McCree felt farther and farther from his own sense of normalcy. He was not being taken to the middle of nowhere, however. At no point did he lose sight of the man-made, oversized forest of concrete and steel that was Hanamura. He sat against the window with his pack in the seat beside him, and he stared at the drops of water running down the glass. In a few minutes, he'd be stuck out there in this bad weather. And for how long? Hours? Days? Weeks? He thought of the little paper crane, and how it would be destroyed if it got wet, so he tucked it, and his cell phone, into a pocket inside the bag.

There was a bus stop at the trail's head. The parking lot there was empty, understandably. McCree didn't even bother with the umbrella packed into his camping gear, he just threw his bags over his shoulders and headed straight into the tree line. He had a vague plan in his head - he would find somewhere dry enough to build a camp before he even bothered pulling out his map or the GPS on his phone. He didn't bother checking the exact time, but he knew it was early afternoon. That gave him enough time to hike the couple of hours it would take to get him deeper into the woods, then maybe another hour to set up camp (he didn't trust his tent-building skills), and he'd still have maybe an hour or two of daylight to look for signs of a dragon.

Really, how hard could it be? If Hanzo was a dragon, and if the person who had seen him wasn't exaggerating, then he was - what, at least one hundred or maybe one hundred and fifty feet long? (“ _Maybe even longer!”_ McCree reminded himself.)

McCree had been in the woods countless times in his life, but the only other real _forest_ he'd been in was the Black Forest, back when Overwatch was still active and doing missions there. Even still, the parts of the Black Forest he had explored had been badly damaged by battles. This was the first time he had stepped foot into a forest so dense and so untouched by man or Omnic. Emerald trees of all varieties sprouted up from earth carpeted in thick moss. That moss was _everywhere_. It grew on rocks, on fallen tree limbs, and it was even attempting to take over the hiking trails. The fecund smell of it, combined with the scent of rain-soaked dirt, was overpowering. 

The canopy took the brunt of the downpour, but it soaked his clothes and filled his boots. Still, he hiked. He kept to the muddy trail, following as it wound gradually uphill past some camping grounds and then around a small lake. He tried to enjoy the sound of rain pelting the leaves overhead, but he was too wet to really feel anything but miserable, and the wind was eerie, sometimes like a whisper. He remembered the tales of the Suicide Forest, and he felt that he understood why someone would choose to end their life in a place like this. That voice of the wind might be capable of unsettling suggestions to ears that were open to hearing it. Because he was on a mountain's base, the ground seemed to rise up all around him, making him feel small, and it was impossible to see more than maybe forty feet ahead at all times because of how dense the forest was. McCree thought, also, that to hope for one's body to be lost, reclaimed by nature, could be comforting.

_Those poor people,_ McCree thought, and he prayed to God above and all the Saints he could remember his Mama ever naming that he didn't find any abandoned camps-turned-graves in this forest.

He had no sense of how long he walked, but hours must have passed. At one point, he found himself at a fork in the trail. It seemed that one way led back downhill, so he chose the other. The path was paved underfoot now, although plants grew up between the cracks. It wound between the trees for just a short while before leading to a staircase of stone, framed by an old torii gate that he assumed had once, long-ago, been painted red, but now was a dull orange. Hoping these steps might lead him to some kind of shelter from the rain, McCree jogged up them despite the exhaustion burning in his thighs. At the peak of his climb was a clearing being reclaimed by the forest, and at its center stood the rotting wooden remains of an abandoned Shinto shrine. Twin fox statues sat watching over the structure, but whatever icon or relic it had once contained was long missing. It stood empty, like the skeleton of its former self.

“You fellas don't mind if I get outta the rain for a sec, do you?” he asked of the foxes, and he stepped up inside. It was just a barren wooden room, even the spider webs in the corners were long abandoned, but the roof was intact enough to keep the rain out, and he supposed that was all that mattered.

He pulled off his boots, dumping the water out of them, before checking that the contents of his pack were still dry. Thankfully, they were. His camping supplies included packages of dehydrated meals and protein bars. He didn't feel like starting a fire to boil water for the former, so instead he opened up a couple of the latter to eat while he checked his phone. It was still close to fully charged, and he had one power bank that he could use to charge it again while out here, but he had to be careful not to waste the battery. No updates from Genji or Yaeko, but he did use the GPS and his map to figure out where he was. There was no indication of a shrine here on the map or on the internet. He could tell that he had passed the campgrounds, where Hanzo had supposedly been sighted, long ago, but this forest was massive, and there would be many miles of trekking before he could say with confidence that he had combed all of it. He hadn't even gone off the trail, yet. This was going to take ages.

Before shutting down his phone to conserve battery, he searched for “fox shrine, Hanamura.” There were countless results, but nothing about this one. In fact, he discovered that shrines to the god Inari and his fox messengers were arguably the most common in all of Japan. They could not even be counted because there were so many. So the search did not help at all, although it did give him an idea.

McCree opened another protein bar and broke it in half, then he stepped, barefoot, back out into the rain. “Hey,” he addressed one of the fox statues, “so I hear you're s'posed to be the messenger of some god? You think They'd mind if I stayed here for a bit to keep dry? Think you could ask Them for me?”

He set one half of the protein bar on the statue's stone base, then turned to its twin. “And you,” he said, dropping the remainder of the bar for the second statue, “I dunno if you take requests from foreigners like me, but I'm tryin' to find a dragon. You seen him around? Ha! I'm so desperate to find him that I'm askin' a dang statue for help.”

* * *

He hadn't planned on falling asleep there. He didn't know how it had happened. One minute, he was reading the novel he'd brought with him from the airport and hoping the rain might die down, the next he was waking up in pitch black. His legs ached from all the climbing, and his spine was sore from the uncomfortable position he had passed out in. He wondered what time it was and cursed himself for not wearing a watch, because he didn't want to waste the battery turning on his phone just to check the clock. For some reason, as he sat up and stretched, something felt wrong to him. A current of unease in the air made every hair on his body stand on end. He fumbled for the lantern hanging from his pack, but before he turned it on, he stopped himself. He knew what was wrong. Realization hit him as hard as a slap: _the night was silent_.

The rain had stopped, although there was still the occasional patter upon the roof as water dripped down from leaves overhead. That was the only sound. There were no humming insects, no owls, nothing but his own shallow breaths trapped in this wooden shrine and the beat of his pulse in his ears. Every creature in the forest seemed to be waiting. McCree was certain that this was what had woken him. In his sleep, he had become aware of the palpable tension.

Peacekeeper was secured in the case at the bottom of his bag, but in the darkness, the revolver would be useless. He didn't bother with the lantern, either, instead pulling out the smaller flashlight. He held it to his chest, listening hard, waiting for some sign to turn it on. Could he make out the sound of rustling wet leaves? Or was that simply his imagination going wild? Holding his breath, he crawled on hands and knees to the shrine's entrance and peeked his head out into the night.

McCree didn't think he had ever been in a darkness so absolute before. If he looked overhead, the pale moonlight that caught in the dense clouds was just enough for him to make out the shapes of treetops, but at eye-level, he couldn't even see his hands in front of him. Still not even daring to breathe, he stared out and hoped his vision would adjust. Some sixth sense warned him not to turn on the flashlight. Whatever was out there, he figured that he didn't want to be seen by it.

There came a sound that shook the trees, the inhalation of air through a mouth far too large. McCree's head whipped around to find the source. In the darkness, he saw two reflective orbs the size of a grown man's head. They shone red and golden in the night. A shape moved past the shrine, the size of a van, except longer. Much longer. It kept going and going and going -

“Hanzo?” McCree said, surprised that his voice came out a choked whisper. He tried again, louder this time, “Hanzo Shimada? S'that you?”

There came the sound of two things colliding and then a single, very human, grunt of pain.

McCree jumped to his feet and hit the button on his flashlight.

At first, it looked like a wall of blue brick had been built overnight around the shrine. It took him several seconds to realize he was looking at scales, not bricks, and that this _wall_ was actually Hanzo's body coiled around the clearing.

His jaw dropped.

Yaeko had been right. The witnesses online had been right. No, he realized. Those witnesses had been _wrong_. Hanzo was longer than anything McCree had ever seen. The creature was two hundred - maybe even two hundred and fifty - feet long from tail to nose. Cobalt scales covered his serpentine body, except for an underbelly of shimmering silver. That great head was crowned by magnificent golden antlers and framed by a mane of downy golden fur, which tapered and ran down his body and along his spine like a fin. McCree gawked at the thing, wondering if he was asleep and just dreaming. He couldn't believe that he had actually found Hanzo - or, rather, that Hanzo had found him. This was the man he had been staring at pictures of for the past several days. This was the man whose origami crane sat protected from the rain in his pack. Except he truly was a dragon, like straight from a fairy tale. It wasn't the type of dragon that McCree had grown up with, the kind with big wings that blew fire. Instead, he was like the dragons on the crests at Shimada Castle - a snakelike, wingless thing. 

Hanzo had attempted to flee. The sound McCree had heard was him banging his antlers into the torii gate, and he was still recovering.

“Hanzo!” McCree shouted to him, “I was sent here by Genji! And by Yaeko! Wait, don't run!”

The massive head whipped around, eyes angry and red. His panting mouth hung opened, revealing rows of teeth, some of which were longer than McCree's forearm. He let out a cry that shook the rain from the trees and make the earth tremble. It was part lion's roar, part booming whale's song, a low and terrible bellow that seemed to freeze the blood in McCree's veins. McCree threw his hands up to cover his ears.

“Please!” McCree shouted, “Just talk to me!” Could Hanzo even talk, he wondered? Had his ability to communicate been lost with his human form?

The dragon lunged in like a striking snake, snapping his deadly teeth just feet from the shrine's entrance and McCree's unprotected body. “Leave me alone,” the dragon said, “Or I shall eat you!” At least now McCree didn't have to wonder if he could speak, and he had the stunning realization that he was hearing _Hanzo's voice_ for the first time. It hadn't occurred to him to wonder how the man might sound, but now that he had heard him, the voice fit the man perfectly. Each syllable was so clearly and precisely spoken, the tone was low and filled with disdain. 

McCree jumped down out of the shrine, his bare feet nearly slipping on the moss-covered stones. He held the flashlight low beneath his face, allowing Hanzo to see him in the beam. He was close enough that he could have reached up to touch the dragon's golden whiskers, which hung down from each side of his snout like a catfish's, both of them fifteen feet long or more. “You'll eat me?” he challenged the dragon, “That's one hell of a threat, Shimada!”

“You doubt the sharpness of my bite?” Hanzo asked him, lowering his head and drawing his lips back over white fangs.

“Not at all,” McCree said, “But I reckon if you wanted to eat me, you woulda done it while I was sleepin'. You've been watchin' me, haven't you?”

Hanzo snorted, the puff of hot breath and splatters of mucus was strong enough to knock McCree back onto his ass. “Then you should leave before I change my mind,” Hanzo said, turning his head to retreat.

McCree reached out, wrapping a fist around one whisker as it whipped past him. He tried to jerk Hanzo's head back around, but he was like a fly to the dragon, who pulled him off the ground and dragged him along as though he weighed nothing. “Genji n' Yaeko are lookin' for you!” he shouted.

Hanzo tried to shake him free, but McCree's metal hand had a tight grip. "Then why isn't Genji here? Why has he sent you? Was he afraid that I would not allow him to leave with his life this time?" 

"Genji _was_ here!" McCree tried to protest, "But he got called away! If you'd just calm down, then I could explain it to you!" 

“Let go!” the dragon growled, “Can I not be allowed to suffer alone in peace!”

Dangling from a whisker, McCree was being swung around like a kid on a fairground ride. The absurdity of this situation struck McCree hard, and he began to laugh as Hanzo continued trying to shake him off.

“Is this amusing to you?” Hanzo snarled, raising one tremendous arm to pry McCree free.

He held the man in a fist like a child holding a toy. The dragon's grip was tight but careful, his scales surprisingly smooth. McCree eyed the talons now wrapped dangerously close to his face, and all he could do was laugh some more. “Not at all. I just feel like I'm losin' my damn mind. Yaeko told me you'd be a dragon, but I really didn't believe her.”

“How did she know that I would be a dragon?” Hanzo asked.

“Well, if you don't run off and leave, then I'll tell you everything,” McCree said.

So Hanzo lowered him back to the ground, and McCree returned inside to his pack, swapping the flashlight out for the lantern, which he switched on to illuminate more of the shrine grounds. He sat on the steps with the lantern between his feet, and Hanzo coiled in the clearing like the world's largest snake, watching with his reptilian face twisted into a look of almost human disdain. _There we go,_ McCree thought. If he had doubted this dragon's identity at all, there was no mistaking that scowl. He had it branded into his memory, thanks to Yaeko's photo album. For the next few minutes, he explained to Hanzo how his past few days had gone, starting with Genji approaching him at the motel and ending with his stay at Ryuuza Ryokan. He did leave out some things, such as seeing Hanzo's baby pictures and, for some reason, the hanging scroll that Yaeko had translated to him. 

Once his story had been told, Hanzo sat still, churning over his thoughts. McCree hadn't expected Hanzo to be open with him, but he had hoped for some kind of reaction - perhaps defensiveness about his condition, or desperation to break the curse, or even just anger that Genji had run off to save the world before finding him. Instead, he was quiet and contemplative. This was not a man who had lost control of himself, McCree realized. This was a man whose control was so absolute that barely a flicker of humanity remained in him. 

"It's strange, sittin' in front of you like this," he said to fill the silence, "Not because of the way you look, but because I've been thinkin' about you almost nonstop for the past week. I bet this is what it feels like to meet a celebrity." He laughed and dug in his pocket for a cigar, only to find that the whole pack had been ruined by the rain. He had forgotten he had been carrying them.

Hanzo ignored his comments. "Did you and Genji come with the intentions of talking me into joining Overwatch?" he asked, "Because, if so, this has been a waste of your time."

"No!" McCree said, "Haven't you listened at all to what I just told you? Genji was worried about you. He _cares_ about you. He was scared you got taken by Talon."

The two stared at each other in the lantern's glow, McCree's gaze cool while Hanzo's was blazing. Here he was, he thought, arguing with Hanzo Shimada himself. It gave him a thrill that he couldn't explain. For days, he'd heard so much about Hanzo's shitty attitude. Of course, the man-turned-dragon wasn't happy to see him, and of course, he was responding with cynicism and scowls. McCree felt that he would have been almost disappointed if Hanzo had turned out to be anything less than the most disagreeable person on the planet. 

"What are you smiling at?" 

"Huh? Nothin'."

"Well, you can return to my brother and let him know that you found me. I am fine. There is no Talon here," Hanzo said.

"I ain't goin' back without you."

"So you _are_ here to recruit me," the dragon growled.

"No! No, that's not what I meant!" McCree said, scrambling to find the words to explain himself, "I just meant that I'm not leavin' you until we've got you sorted out back to normal. I came all this way to help you."

“Ha! Help me?” the dragon scoffed, “All this talking you have done, but you have yet to tell me how you propose to _help._ ”

Well, that was the real problem, wasn't it? McCree had no clue how to help Hanzo. He didn't know some magical spell to turn him back, and he was fairly sure Yaeko didn't have a clear idea, either. Her plan to save Hanzo's heart had sounded perfectly reasonable when McCree had assumed they were talking about fiction, but now that he was faced with this reality, it seemed impossible. “I don't know," he admitted, shrugging his shoulders, "But I've found you, and I didn't think I'd get this far. We'll figure it out from here. Together. ”

Hanzo snorted. “You cannot do anything for me. I should just eat you right now.”

He lowered his head and opened his jaw. His mouth was so huge that McCree could have stood upright inside of it. The man did not flinch. Instead, when the beast drew close enough, he reached up to touch the hair growing from his snout. It was soft as a bird's feathers. “There you go with talkin' about eatin' me again,” he said, “You think I look tasty?”

Hanzo jerked away from the touch. “I no longer know taste. Only hunger.”

“Well, I could help you with that, at least,” offered McCree.

“Oh? So you volunteer yourself?” A scarlet tongue ran over his fangs and he gave a low, joyless chuckle.

“No! Hold yer horses,” McCree said, “What I mean is that, unlike you, I can buy groceries.”

“Ha! Yes, I'll take a sandwich. Jesse McCree, _you fool!_ I could eat a man in one bite!” 

"Then I can buy a lot of groceries."


	9. found ur brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now that Hanzo's here, I wanted to say that his appearance is meant to be the same as the dragon representing Hanzo in the "Dragons" short, in case that wasn't obvious from the description. I fuckin love that short, y'all, so I highly recommend re-watching it just to get full enjoyment out of this fic 
> 
> *blows kisses to all of you*

There had been a time in McCree's childhood, before Overwatch and before the Deadlock Gang, when riding horseback had felt almost as natural as walking on his own two legs. Together, man and animal seemed to work as one unit, and, as a boy, that sense of power and connection to another living thing had been exhilarating. The rise and fall of the horse's muscles between his thighs created a hypnotic rhythm, and he could see the world from a different perspective on horseback; all of his problems seemed a little smaller and the world a little more serene.

Riding a dragon was _nothing_ like that.

Hanzo had been the one to suggest it. McCree was glad for that – it was clearly the only solution that made sense, but he wasn't about to insult Hanzo's pride by suggesting it himself.

The muscle memory of pulling himself into a saddle meant nothing in this situation. He wasted several minutes attempting to climb Hanzo's body, but he was so thick, and his scales so smooth, that McCree felt like a clown with all the times he busted his ass falling back into the mud. Finally, simultaneously exasperated and amused by McCree's many failures, Hanzo tilted his head, offering an antler. McCree settled in between the antlers, his body surrounded by the fluff of Hanzo's golden mane. He had to sit with his legs spread unnaturally far apart to accommodate the dragon's girth.

“This is crazy,” he muttered and then said, louder, to make sure he was heard, “Please don't drop me.”

Hanzo twisted his head and rolled one eye back to glance at him, “Oh, really? You think that this is a crazy situation for _you_? Which one of us is a three hundred foot long lizard?”

McCree reached forward and gave him a pat on the forehead, “Giddy-up, boy,” he teased.

Hanzo threw his head back and McCree was flung from his neck. He hit the ground with a grunt, glad for the waterlogged earth, which softened his impact. For a moment he lay there, groaning and winded, making sure he could still move his arms and legs. Then he started to laugh.

The massive dragon's head moved into his line of vision, hanging above him and blocking out the cloudy night. “Laughing at your own joke?” he asked.

McCree shook his head and reached up to tug on one of his whiskers. “No, it's just... I've been trackin' you for so long. You've been on my mind nonstop the past few days. I knew you were gonna be an asshole. I had braced myself for it. But I never expected it to be this fun.”

“Fun?” Hanzo repeated, raising a golden, furred eyebrow. “How is any of this _fun_?”

“I mean talkin' to you. You're a real character, Hanzo Shimada. Remind me to buy you a beer once you can fit back inside a building.” McCree pulled himself to his feet with the help of a dangling whisker.

“If you can manage to turn me human again, Jesse McCree, then I shall buy you a dozen beers.”

There was another awkward scramble as McCree got into place again, and then _they flew._

No running take-off, no pumping of wings. Hanzo cut up through the sky, bullet-quick. McCree blinked and they were out of the forest, blinked again and they were up piercing the clouds. Icy beads of rain soaked McCree's clothes. Once they had burst through, the night above was a breathtaking blaze of stars.

Only when the clouds hung far beneath them did Hanzo's flight slow. They soared so close to Fuji's cone that McCree felt he could have reached out to touch it. _Don't look down,_ he warned himself. The dragon's serpentine undulations carried them forward by some magic that defied all logic. McCree, full of terror and full of joy, threw his head back and gave a mighty _whoop_ of excitement. The wind was sharp in his face, burning his throat and eyes. He ducked low against Hanzo's back, into the warmth of his mane.

“Hold on!” Hanzo shouted back to him.

He gave McCree almost no time to react. They began to plummet. McCree felt himself go weightless, his body rising up off Hanzo's neck as they fell. He gripped the antlers for dear life, the wind whipping his face and bringing tears to his eyes. “Stop it, Hanzo!” he screamed, “Stop it! Stopitstopitstopit-”

The clouds were rushing towards them, and then, beneath that, the ground. He watched the lights of the city draw closer and closer, until he could make out cars on the roads and then even people on the streets. He hollered and shrieked, clinging to Hanzo until his knuckles were white.

And then they stopped.

His weight returned to him like a punch to the gut, and he sprawled against the dragon's neck, panting and trembling.

“Still having _fun_ , Jesse?” Hanzo asked.

McCree gave a shaky laugh. “You bet,” he said.

It had been so fast, but there they were, already – hovering above Hanamura and coming in for a gentle landing in the middle of the Shimada Castle grounds. Hanzo aimed for the rock garden, and when his feet struck, they kicked up clouds of sand that stung their eyes and dried out their mouths. McCree coughed and slid off Hanzo's back, but his legs were weak and quivering, and they gave out beneath his weight. He sat trying to catch his breath and regain his composure. Hanzo laughed, and then McCree began to laugh with him.

“You sunovabitch,” he said, and he spat out a mouthful of sand. Once the feeling returned to his legs, he pulled himself up to his feet and tried to slap some of the sand out of his jeans. His clothes were dirty from head to toe, and he was sure he'd draw tons of unwanted attention walking around like this, but it wasn't like he had much of a choice. 

Hanzo gave him directions to a twenty-four hour grocery store close to Hanamura Station and opened the massive castle gate just wide enough for McCree to slip out. "Be back here before dawn, or I'll leave you to walk back alone," he warned him.

"You leave me alone, and I ain't feedin' you," McCree said.

"And then you will have the honor of explaining to Genji and Yaeko that you lost me again due to your stubbornness," Hanzo growled. 

"Oh, Hanzo, if either of us is stubborn, it's -" 

"Just _go_ , Jesse."

So McCree slipped out into the dark streets of Hanamura, finding them empty and quiet. He still had no idea of the time, but he'd have to guess it was perhaps two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning. He wondered if he was dreaming, because everything about the last few hours felt surreal. He had found Hanzo; he had _ridden_ Hanzo. The strangest and most wonderful thing, though, was that Hanzo seemed to be the exact kind of man McCree had imagined he would be, just in dragon form. His scowling, his belligerence, his pride - McCree was experiencing these things for the first time, but, instead, it felt like a reunion with an old friend. 

If it was two or three here, then what time was it in Gibraltar? He tried to count back the hours. Seven? Eight? Something like that. McCree pulled out his phone. He thought about calling Genji, but he felt like he needed more time to process what was happening, so instead he just sent a quick text: "found ur brother". He knew that he should explain the particular _state_ that he had found Hanzo in, but he figured that it would be much easier to just send a picture to him later, so he put the phone back for the time being.

The walk to the store was only about fifteen minutes from the castle. It was the only illumination on an otherwise dark strip of road, several blocks over from the busier streets and across from a small, empty park. At this time of night, the staff was minimal, all slow-moving and quiet young people who hovered around the registers. Everywhere else in Japan, he had been greeted when entering, but these employees barely lifted their heads to glance at him. It was fine; he preferred it that way. He spotted only one other shopper, a well-dressed young woman browsing the produce section, who looked like she did not belong in this sleepy place. 

McCree grabbed a basket and headed straight to the meat department. He was surprised to find that everything was individually packaged and so orderly that it almost seemed a waste of time and plastic. He gazed over the meat, shiny and pink with beautiful marbling of fat throughout, and the plump pieces of chicken. The sight of it made him hungry, but he passed these up, not sure that he would have the chance or ability to cook them properly. Fish, though, could be eaten raw - sushi, he figured. Even though he couldn't read the labels, he threw the plastic-wrapped Styrofoam trays of fish into his basket until it could not hold anymore. He tested the weight of the filled basket on his arm, then he went to leave it at the register for the employee to start scanning, while he retrieved a second basket and filled that one, as well. As an afterthought, on his way back to pay for his groceries, he grabbed two bags of apples under his arm. 

"That bastard better pay me back," he muttered to himself, as he pulled out the yen notes that Yaeko had provided him. The young man bagging the fish glanced up at him through his bangs with suspicion. 

McCree returned to the castle with his arms straining under the weight of the groceries. Those fifteen minutes felt even longer than the hours of hiking he had done the evening before. He kicked the gate, and the door creaked open for him, pushed by the gigantic, clawed hand of a dragon. "I got you fish. Hope it's enough, cuz I nearly wiped the place out," he said. He sat down, cross-legged, on the deck that surrounded the rock garden. Hanzo's body had to be coiled tightly just to fit in this space, he noticed, as he started spreading the packages of fish out around him. 

Hanzo reached for one, but his three-fingered hands, both of which were as big as a full-grown man, could not unwrap the plastic. It was astonishing to think that those hands had once torn his brother's flesh to ribbons, but now they weren't even capable of the most basic things. McCree watched him struggle, wondering if he should offer to help or if doing so would offend Hanzo's pride. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat. "Let me help you with that?" he suggested. 

Hanzo dropped it back into his lap. He avoided McCree's eyes, and McCree imagined he could see shame in those reptilian features. "Thank you."

McCree peeled open the plastic and tossed the packaging back into one of the empty grocery bags. "Come down here," he said. 

Hanzo lowered his head to McCree's level and opened his jaws. The size was dizzying. It was like looking in on a fleshy red mattress laid out between rows of stalagmites and stalactites. Keeping whales in captivity had been illegal for about fifty years or so now, but McCree had seen old videos of trainers rewarding orca with fish, and that was what he thought about as he slapped the first fillet of thick, red fish-meat onto the dragon's waiting tongue. As soon as his arm was pulled back, out of the way, Hanzo tilted his head back to swallow. 

"You sure you want to change back?" he teased Hanzo, "You make a much better dragon."

"I know. I deserve this suffering."

McCree had expected Hanzo to snap some furious retort back at him, but not this. He wasn't even sure how to respond. Once, McCree had believed that Hanzo _did_ deserve all the suffering in the world, but he wasn't certain he felt the same way anymore. In fact, at some point he had begun to agree with Genji - Hanzo had suffered enough with his decade of guilt. He sighed. "C'mon, Hanzo. Get your ugly head back down here."

Hanzo obeyed, and McCree tossed another slab of fish into the back of his cavernous throat. "Why do you show me kindness?" he asked, "And do not say that it is for Genji's sake. I do not understand why he would show me kindness, either." 

McCree put his hand on the dragon's nose, rubbing his palm over the scales. "Let's forget about the past for now. You can ask Genji yourself once you're outta this mess. But the way I see it, he's put the past behind him, so you and me have his permission to put it behind us, too. In fact, I think the thing he wants more'n anything else in the world is for the two of you to patch things up."

Hanzo sighed, releasing a hot wave of breath that tousled McCree's hair, and there was an instant where McCree thought he was relishing the touch, but then he jerked away, his brows knitting in consternation. They stared at each other, McCree certain that Hanzo was about to lose his temper again, but then Hanzo just said, "Will you open the octopus next?"

McCree was glad to oblige. "So what now?" he asked, waving the purple tentacle. Hanzo opened his jaws and McCree threw it between those deadly teeth, "I was thinkin' we could fly down to Beppu and see your aunt."

"No," Hanzo said. 

McCree got to work on another package. "Why not?" he asked, "Can't fly that far?"

"I could fly that far, but I do not want to."

"Okay. Mind explainin' why not?" He held out the next slab of fish - long and white and oily - and Hanzo opened up to catch it. 

It seemed Hanzo would not answer, as he waited for his next bite with his teeth clenched into a scowl, but, after a few heartbeats of silence, he said, "Does Yaeko know about Genji?"

"That he's alive? Yeah. They spoke on the phone just a coupla days ago."

"No. That I tried to kill him."

"Oh." McCree rolled a sticky sheet of plastic wrap in his palm until it was a tight ball. Then he stuffed it into the growing bag of trash beside him. He looked up at the dragon and grinned. "I don't think so, no. It's okay, Hanzo. I don't reckon Genji plans on tellin' her about that, either. I certainly don't."

"There must be somewhere else we can go," Hanzo said, "I do not wish to face her like this."

"Well, we could go to Overwatch."

"No."

"Just listen!" McCree snapped at him, flinging a fish at his face. It smacked him on the nose, and he caught it with a clumsy swipe of his tongue before it fell to the sand. The dragon's brows furrowed in anger, and he opened his mouth to argue, but McCree interrupted him, "I'm not tryin' to get you to join Overwatch. I already told you that, and I ain't a liar. I don't even know what my own plans are in regards to the recall. But they're at a base in Gibraltar. It's someplace safe, where you don't have to be livin' out here in the woods. If anyone can find a way to fix you, it'll be them. As soon as you're back to normal, you can leave. It ain't a trap or some over the top recruitment scheme. I promise, Hanzo. You have my word. I'm on yer side. You can trust me."

Hanzo did not respond right away, but the anger deflated from his gaze. 

Just then, a high-pitched tone interrupted them. Hanzo reared back, his body beginning to uncoil, but McCree held up a hand. "Hang on, sorry," he muttered, "That's my phone."

It was a text from Genji. 

No. It was several texts from Genji. They were coming in rapid-fire now. 

_Where was he?_

_Is he safe?_

_Where are you?_

_Should I come back?_

_I'm coming back_

_Tell me where you are_

McCree sighed. He opened the camera app and held up the phone, snapping a photo of Hanzo looming above him. He sent Genji the photo. 

"What are you doing?" Hanzo asked.

"Genji," McCree replied, "What do you want me to tell him, Hanzo? You comin' back with me?"

Hanzo's nostrils flared. "I can't fly that far, Jesse, and it is not safe for me to risk being seen."

"So I'll tell him to come here and find us."

"No!" 

McCree, whose fingers hovered over the screen, preparing to type a response, shot his gaze up to Hanzo's vast head. The dragon was wide-eyed. "Okay. I'll tell him not to come, but can I ask him to find some kinda transport for you? I'd like to get you somewhere safe, but I won't do anything without yer permission."

McCree went back to tearing open the next package of fish. It seemed Hanzo might refuse to eat any more. He was turning his head away, his eyes roaming anywhere but McCree's patient face and the offered palm of what looked like salmon. Then he lowered his head, and McCree threw the fish between his parted teeth. After he swallowed, he took a deep breath, a shudder passing through his long body. "Yes. You can tell him to start planning, in case I do decide to go." 

McCree, masking his inner excitement with an expression of indifference, texted Genji back. They'd need some way to take a dragon from Japan to Gibraltar. A ship of some kind, maybe? It would have to be huge. If some kind of transportation could be located, then they could work on convincing Hanzo, but, until then, they were stuck here. He turned his phone off, then he stared up at Hanzo and grinned. 

"What are you smiling at?" Hanzo growled, "I have not made a decision yet."

"I know," McCree said, "But you're considerin' it. And that means a lot." 

* * *

After the two of them finished off the groceries, they took another flight back to the forest. Hanzo moved more slowly, now. The full stomach and lack of sleep that night were catching up to him. McCree clung to him and looked out upon the sea of clouds rolling out in all directions from horizon to horizon. They were gray, heavy, ugly things from below, but from above, it was unlike anything he'd seen before. He imagined he could stretch out an arm and run his fingers through the soft nimbostratus waves, but the only way he could soothe the churning panic of acrophobia in his gut was to dig his fingers tight into Hanzo's hair and not let go. And, there, rising from it in all her glory was the peak of Fuji, like a lone island out of the mist. Hanzo pressed in tight against her slope, and within seconds they were under the cover of trees again.

Hanzo made a gentle and graceful landing, as though he didn't weigh probably a hundred tonnes. In the foggy twilight, it took McCree several seconds of staring into the darkness to understand where they were. A half dozen buildings of perhaps three or four stories surrounded them, and McCree didn't need the dawn to tell that they were in terrible shape. Moss grew up the walls and vines burst out through patches in the roofs, so that both the top and bottom floors were hidden in dense flora that was creeping together to meet in the middle. Those bands of concrete that remained visible between the green were covered in old graffiti. In perhaps a decade, two decades at most, the forest would have reclaimed these ruins completely. 

"Where are we?" McCree asked.

"This is where I have been hiding," Hanzo explained, "There is an old mine nearby. When mining ceased, the buildings were abandoned. I can fit inside some of them, and if I think someone is coming nearby, there are portions of the tunnels that are wide enough for me to fit in, too."

"Is it safe?" McCree asked. He looked up at the buildings, which seemed they might collapse at any second. In fact, some of them had already fallen in on themselves, and beams showed through the broken concrete like skeletal remains. 

"Probably not, but do I have much of a choice?" Hanzo said. 

He ducked into the nearest building. McCree had to jog to keep up. The interior was only just open wide enough for Hanzo to crawl through on his belly. He had to stretch himself around the corners of the halls just to get all the way in. The floorboards were rotten and had been badly broken by tree roots, but Hanzo had cleared a path for himself, pushing all the debris up against the walls. "Is this where you've been sleepin'?" McCree asked. 

Hanzo nodded and flopped down onto his stomach, the whole building shaking under his weight. McCree looked up at the ceiling, a little nervous about its stability. Hanzo's gold and red eyes watched him. "Are you going to rest, too? I could have left you in Hanamura. You could have found a hotel."

"Nah, I've slept in worse places than this." Although, at the moment, McCree could not recall any.

As long as he wasn't just lying on broken glass and rebar, he guessed he'd be okay. He slipped past Hanzo to find a patch of clean floor at the base of a staircase. At least, with a roof over his head, he didn't have to worry about figuring out his tent. He pulled the sleeping bag out of his pack and unrolled it. He wasn't really tired himself, since he'd got several hours of sleep earlier that night, but he supposed he should take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself. Who knew how the next few days were about to go? As he slid into the sleeping bag, his mind was racing, and it seemed unlikely he'd be able to relax. The wind caused unfamiliar sounds in this collapsing building, and each of Hanzo's breaths were too loud. 

"Can you breathe fire?" he asked the dragon.

"If I could, you'd already be cinders," Hanzo replied.

McCree chuckled, and Hanzo gave a soft laugh, too. McCree rolled over to face him, and he was surprised to find those eyes opened and watching him through the darkness. Hanzo's gaze was piercing. McCree felt a shudder pass through him.

"Thank you, Jesse."

"You should really thank Yaeko 'n Genji. They're the ones who sent me out here."

"No," Hanzo said, "I mean... earlier. You told Genji not to come. You are waiting for me to make the decision on my own time. I appreciate that. I do not think I'm ready to face Genji, yet."

"Oh," McCree mumbled, for lack of anything more intelligent to say. He hadn't expected Hanzo to thank him. In fact, a thankful Hanzo went against everything he had imagined about the man in the days leading up to this meeting. As they continued to study each other's shapes in the dark, the clouds released a new torrent of rain. The man and the dragon listened to the patter of drops on the crumbling roof, and a sense of peace washed over them. 

By the time McCree began to snore, Hanzo was already deep in a dreamless sleep.


	10. In the Dark

McCree expected to wake up and discover that he was still back at Ryuuza Ryokan, and the past twenty-four hours had not actually happened, but, as soon as he opened his eyes – there was Hanzo. Only the head of the dragon could be seen; the rest of his body snaked throughout the halls. It was hard to think of him as a human, like this. He was so still that he almost looked like a statue carved from sapphires, and McCree, for one horrible instant, thought he might have died in the night, until his noticed the silky furs around his lips shifting with each breath. 

He sat up, stretching and yawning. He could hear rain pattering upon the broken roofs, and the light that did filter in was pale and dim. Sleeping on a mat on the ground had not been his worst night, but it was also far from the best. His bones ached. Too bad he hadn’t packed any pain relievers. He was really starting to feel that he wasn’t a young man anymore.

"Hanzo?"

Hanzo opened one eye and growled, "Leave me alone," before rolling over onto his back and falling back asleep.

So McCree was left to himself for the rest of the morning. Perhaps, had the weather been nicer, he would have explored the other mine buildings, but it was grey and miserable out there, so he stayed inside. A door at the end of the corridor led to a set of stairs that were still structurally sound, so he took a flashlight and headed upstairs. This building seemed to have once been apartments or dormitories for the former miners, because he found evidence of the lives once lived here. Many personal items littered the floor - newspapers, a child's doll, pairs of shoes. On a landing in the stairway, a dresser sat on its side, as though someone moving it had decided halfway down that it was not worth the effort. In one hallway, he found stacks of old televisions against a wall, their dusty screens all broken, their cords reaching across the floors like growing vines. One room he passed sent a chill up his spine - a single wooden dining chair sat alone and rotting, facing him like an invitation to take a seat. 

Exploring the apartments was not fun for McCree. It brought back old memories of rescuing - and failing to rescue - civilians from places where Null Sector or other terrorist groups had attacked. He knew that it was likely no one had died here, that these people had led normal lives and then left to move on to better things, but each time he found a place where steps had collapsed or shelves had been overturned, he had to fight the urge to check for survivors. 

Hunger brought him back down to his makeshift camp a couple of hours later. In his gear was a portable camping stove attached to a fuel canister, which he used to boil some water so he could re-hydrate one of the meal packs. The one that he picked was tasteless and could hardly be identified as real food, although it claimed to be rice and chicken. The texture was hard to swallow and turned gummy in his throat. Once his supplies were all packed away, he found a place out of Hanzo's line of sight to dress in fresh clothes and relieve himself, and after that he tried again: "Hanzo?"

Hanzo bared his teeth at him. 

"Oh, come on, big guy, it's after noon," McCree said. He reached up, resting his palm on Hanzo's throat. The scales were smooth, but if he rubbed his hand in the other direction, it was like stroking sandpaper. 

Hanzo jerked away, rolling back onto his stomach and pressing his underbelly to the floor. He glared at McCree and snarled, "Don't pet me. I'm not your dog."

"Sorry! Sorry," McCree said, laughing, "It's just still hard to wrap my head around. A flesh 'n blood dragon. I mean, who didn't dream of this when they was a kid?"

"I didn't."

McCree rolled his eyes, "Of course you didn't. What _did_ you dream of?" 

"That is none of your business."

The white noise of rainfall became louder, and a low rumble of thunder signaled the approach of a storm. McCree couldn't resist the urge. He reached up again, combing his fingers through the golden hairs along Hanzo's spine. It was Hanzo's turn to roll his eyes, but he allowed the touch. McCree left the tangle of fur and traced over the pattern of scales. He felt Hanzo tense beneath his palm, and he froze, waiting to be snapped at. After a few seconds of silence, receiving no retribution, he continued - gently, slowly, his fingers danced across the shimmering hide. 

"Is this okay?" he asked.

Hanzo shuddered. "If you must." 

"You're warm. Ain't cold, like a snake." McCree pressed his cheek against the dragon's vast side. Each time the dragon took a breath, his body rose and fell against McCree's weight, creating a rhythm that, to McCree, felt like the rolling waves of a quiet sea. "Do you think dinosaurs were like this?" 

"I wouldn't know." 

It wasn't lost on McCree how intimate this moment was. He could never press himself against another human this way, and certainly not Hanzo. But Hanzo didn't seem to be bothered in the slightest. In fact, he had curled his head into his neck and had closed his eyes again. He looked at peace, perhaps even like he was falling asleep again.

"Wake up. We have a lot to do," he said, pulling away from the dragon and patting him on the side.

Hanzo opened his eyes again to glare up at him. "Such as?"

"Well, we gotta work on tryin' to turn you back."

Hanzo snorted, "And you know how to do that? I am all ears."

"Well," McCree said, "I've been thinkin'. Now don't get mad at me before I finished - "

"I am going to get mad," Hanzo interrupted him, "I can already tell you are about to suggest something either foolish or offensive. Likely both."

"Okay, well let me get my words out, 'n then you can get mad," McCree said, putting his hands on his hips and exhaling through his lips in frustration, "You don't wanna let Yaeko see you like this. I get that. But what if you just talked to her? We can hide you. She don't have to see you."

"You're right. I am mad."

Hanzo began to back his long body out of the building, and McCree jogged after the retreating head. "C'mon, Hanzo! We can hide your body. You can talk to her through a wall or somethin', but I think it would do you a lot of good just to talk to her. If anyone's gonna find out how to turn you back, it'll be her. She has all your old family lore, she knows more than either of us do about this. Just talk to her."

Hanzo rose out through the dilapidated entrance and was finally able to stand tall, the rain pelting his behemoth body in the fog. _"Silence!_ Stop pretending that the hours you have spent with Genji or Yaeko have given you any insight into my past! You do not know what is best for me!" he shouted, and his words turned into a quivering, rumbling roar that was as loud as the thunder.

McCree had faced worse. He'd take a dragon over an army of Talon soldiers any day. He glared up at the dragon with his head held as high as he could hold it. "I know more about you than you think I do. I know that your father drilled his crazy ideas into your head and broke your spirit."

"Stop."

"I know that you were driven to kill Genji based on some code of honor you had brainwashed into you as a kid. I know you ain't a bad man, that you just - "

_"Stop!_ "

Hanzo lunged at him. McCree dove back inside, just as Hanzo's jaws crashed against the building, his fangs sinking deep into the wood of the doorframe. Mcree gawked down that cave of a throat, taking a mental check that he still had all of his limbs. Hanzo braced himself with his arms and jerked back, the doorframe splintering as his teeth came free. 

"Oh, come on, Hanzo," McCree said, pulling himself to his feet and brushing mud from his jeans, "You know I am right. I ain't sayin' anything that ain't facts."

"I do not need some _cowboy_ strolling into my life as though he understands," Hanzo said, "You don't know anything. You are an _outsider_. You are meddling in business that is not your own."

"Hanzo, calm down. We was gettin' along so well a minute ago."

"That is because a minute ago, you kept your mouth shut!" Hanzo snapped at him again, although his teeth stayed several feet away. McCree could feel the hot wave of his breath from how near that mouth was. 

"I ain't afraid of you, Hanzo. I don't think you'd really kill me."

Hanzo's face twisted into a tangle of clenched, gigantic fangs. His gold and red eyes were blazing, the brightest things visible in the sheets of grey rain. With a roar, he tore across the clearing, past the buildings and into the woods in just the blink of an eye.

"Hanzo! Wait!" McCree dashed after in pursuit, his boots sliding in the mud as the sheets of rain soaked through his clothes and blinded him. He kept calling Hanzo's name, but the dragon was just a flash through the trees ahead of him. Each of his steps was like a hundred of McCree's. In no time, he was out of sight. McCree saw just the end of Hanzo's tail whip through the air and vanish into the dark mouth of the mine tunnel. 

He skidded to a stop in front of the portal and cupped his hands over his mouth to call down into the darkness, "Hanzo! Come on! I'm only tryin' to help!"

For a few, desperate seconds, he waited with the rain drenching him, as he weighed his options. He could chase after Hanzo, he could continue to stand out here getting soaked like a fool, or he could go back inside. He really didn't want to go into the tunnels, which were bound to be dangerous, but he also knew that Hanzo was so stubborn he would never come out. The problem was, McCree was stubborn, too. He would gladly go sit under the shelter of the nearest building and watch through a window for the dragon to emerge, but something told him that Hanzo didn't have enough time for them to waste with this foolishness. If they played this game of who's-the-most-stubborn, then both of them would lose. There was too much at stake here. He had to go and get a flashlight. 

* * *

The tunnels were roughly dug out from the stone innards of the mountain, and they were large enough that McCree didn't have to feel claustrophobic at all, although they were dark and silent enough to be frightening in other ways. He kept his flashlight trained on the floor so that he didn't trip over the broken mine cart rails that lead deeper underground. 

"Hanzo?" he called, and his voice echoed off the rocks and back to his ears. 

There was a terrible smell down here, he realized as he walked. It was not strong; it was an old and faded smell, but it was almost like rotten eggs, and it made him feel lightheaded. He had heard stories of miners being killed by gas leaks, and he hoped it was safe to be down there. Hanzo claimed he had been coming down into these tunnels, but who knew if dragons even got sick. For all McCree knew, Hanzo was immortal now. 

He continued to follow the tracks, but with each step he lost more and more sense of the distance to the mine's mouth. From somewhere came the sound of dripping water, but he could not see its source. Some branches of the tunnel were muddier than others, some even contained mineral-rich puddles, but he avoided taking those ways, assuming Hanzo would have avoided them, too. Fences of copper had been built overhead to keep the rock ceiling from collapsing, but the metal was so rusted that it was no longer doing its job. In many places, the fence hung twisted and sharp. It was hard to keep the flashlight's beam on both the path ahead of him and the dangerous, jagged bits of copper that reached out to him from above. 

He was no coward, but this place had him uneasy. "Hanzo!" he shouted again, growing more frustrated with every perilous step. 

Occasionally, his flashlight caught writing on the rock walls. It wasn't vandalism, he thought. These were old, possibly as old as the mine itself, and the one he saw with a date in numbers he could read was from 1937. More than one hundred and thirty years ago. The idea was mind-boggling to him. 

"Hanzo?"

What if Hanzo was no longer in the mines? What if one of the tunnels he had passed led outside, through another portal? He stopped walking, considering turning around. 

And then he heard it. A muffled sound, nearly lost beneath the noise of dripping water and shifting rocks. It was a scratching, scraping sound that made him break out in gooseflesh. 

What if there was something down here? The thought gave him chills. He had, like an idiot, left Peacekeeper back with his things. But, really, was anything more of a danger to him than an angry dragon? 

"Hanzo?"

He strained, with eyes squeezed closed, to hear beyond the echoes of his own voice. Yes! There it was again. 

He knew the layout of the mines was capable of distorting sound, so he didn't know whether to keep going forward or to backtrack and try another tunnel. If he had to guess, though, it sounded like the noise was reaching him through the rock walls. He had to find a tunnel parallel to this one. Making a quick decision, he turned back around and jogged in the direction he had come from, keeping his light on the track beneath him so that he didn't trip over the rails. Most of the side tunnels were too small for a dragon to fit through, and plenty of them he could see the backs of with the beam from his flashlight. 

"Hanzo!" he shouted. 

And a sound came back, soft and distant, but unmistakable. It was a voice, far away, yelling, "Leave me alone!" 

McCree clenched his teeth, so mad he could shoot the dumb lizard right between the eyeballs. He found a tunnel that he guessed to be its source. He had passed it up due to the water that filled it knee-deep. His poor boots, he thought, but they'd been through worse. He stomped up the tunnel, the water icy cold and slowing him down. McCree had made it only perhaps fifteen feet in before he saw the thrashing golden furs at the end of Hanzo's tapered tail. 

"Hanzo Shimada, are you a damn _baby_? Because that's how you're actin' right now."

"Go away."

McCree splashed on forward. He had to flatten himself against Hanzo's side to squeeze up the tunnel towards his head. It became even more obvious to him how huge Hanzo was as he walked the whole length of him, because normally Hanzo carried himself in loops and coils, but down here, he was forced flat and straight. He expected Hanzo to worm his way deeper into the tunnel, to try and get away from him, but the dragon lay very still. Something about it seemed wrong, to McCree. 

"I said _go away!_ " Hanzo snarled, and he shook his body, slamming McCree into the rock wall and knocking the breath from his lungs.

"Fuck you!" McCree cursed, balling his metal hand into a fist and punching Hanzo in the side. It likely felt no worse than an ant bite to the dragon, he realized, feeling foolish. 

He made it to the dragon's head, feeling bruised and angry. There, his flashlight illuminated the problem, and he had to throw a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh. Hanzo's antlers had become caught in the metal grate above. The copper tangle was trapping him in place. He had broken pieces of it loose with his jerking and thrashing, releasing a rockslide onto his own face. Falling stones had left tears in his tough hide, and in the flashlight's beam, trickles of crimson blood stood out against the cerulean scales. His head could not move more than an inch in any direction. 

A wheezy laugh escaped his throat, and Hanzo let out a growl that shook the whole tunnel. "Is this humorous to you?" 

"It sure as hell is. You come in here actin' a fool, and look at what you get for it. Now stop hollerin', or you'll make the whole dang mine cave in." 

"Go away," Hanzo moaned, his tone pure misery.

McCree put the handle of the flashlight between his teeth and began to climb up the dragon's snout, his wet boots slipping in the blood. Hanzo attempted to shake him off, but his range of motion was so limited that it barely affected McCree. "You're only makin' it worse for yourself," McCree chided him. 

Crouching low, so that his head didn't hit the fencing above, McCree reached the dragon's brow. He braced himself on Hanzo's head and began to push. The fencing was strong and sharp, so he shifted most of his weight into his cybernetic prosthetic to prevent slicing up his flesh hand. 

"Come on," he urged Hanzo, "Try to push into my weight."

"If I tear free, the whole tunnel will collapse," Hanzo snapped at him.

He was right. The fence groaned with each of Hanzo's movements. They couldn't risk pulling any more of it free from the bolts. 

"Okay," McCree said, "You're gonna have to trust me."

"I don't have a choice."

"No, you don't." McCree was trying hard to take this seriously. This situation was dangerous, but he also felt that it was completely what Hanzo deserved. He had half a mind to leave him down here for the day, but he knew that wasn't going to earn him Hanzo's trust. Changing the subject, he asked, "What did it feel like, turnin'? Did it hurt? Was it quick?"

"What does this have to do with anything?" Hanzo growled. 

"I'm tryin' to distract you," McCree grumbled. He moved up a little higher, wrapping himself around Hanzo's horns the way he had once, as a boy, climbed trees. He hoped there weren't bats in here, as his head touched the tunnel's ceiling. 

Beneath him, Hanzo sighed. "I woke up a dragon. I do not remember what it felt like to change."

McCree listened to the words, but his attention was on the grating. Hanzo's pulling had bent it out of shape. Cutting through it would take a tool of some kind, which he didn't have. _Damn._ "Were you indoors when it happened?" he asked, "I'm just imaginin' you bustin' out the walls of your house, or somethin'." 

"No, I had been staying in a hotel nearby, but I suppose I must have sleepwalked to Shimada Castle. Or perhaps it was some sort of magic. I do not know."

"This one's free." While Hanzo had been talking, McCree had braced a boot behind one giant antler and had been able to put all his weight into the old metal. It slid off Hanzo's horn with a low squeal of crushing metal. "You might be able to pull your other horn on your own, but let me get down first."

Hanzo held still as McCree descended, using his mane to steady himself. As soon as McCree hopped to the ground, Hanzo jerked forward. There was an ugly scream of protest from the metal, but his second antler came free, and he heaved a sigh, collapsing in relief. 

"You owe me one," McCree teased him, patting him on the cheek.

"Fine. I will speak to my aunt, if that will make you happy."

"Nope, that don't count," McCree said, "Because I was gonna get you to do that anyway."


	11. A Way Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A plot-heavy chapter, which I apologize for. The next one is much more fun, though. I promise ;) 
> 
> And I want to apologize that this is a little late. I just really got the urge to take a short break and upload something different (which I did - some RDR smut lol.) Now I feel better. Plus, all the fun is about to go down here, shit's gonna hit the fan, and I think the rest of this is going to happen pretty fast, so I imagine that'll be the last break I get before we reach the end together!

McCree and Hanzo rested under the roof of the apartment building, out of the deluge of rain. Hanzo's brow was covered in scratches from the copper fencing, but his thick, scaly hide had protected him from anything deep or serious. McCree had a small first-aid kid among his things, thanks to Yaeko's foresight, but there wasn't even close to enough supplies in there to clean the wounds of a dragon. As Hanzo lay on his belly with his head flat on the floor, McCree climbed up onto his face to do his best with the gauze and medical tape.

"Don't worry," he assured Hanzo, "they've already stopped bleedin'. You'll be pretty again tomorrow."

"Pretty?" Hanzo snorted, "You call _this_ pretty?"

"I'm tryin' to be nice," McCree sighed, leaping off of him and back onto the broken floor, "What do you want me to say? You'll be back to lookin' like a damn lizard?"

Hanzo bared his teeth, but the incident in the mine had deflated his spirit. For the moment, he no longer had the desire to fight.

"How'd you manage for so long out here without me, Hanzo?" McCree laughed. He sat down beside Hanzo's huge head and stroked the dragon's cheek, hardly aware he was even doing so. 

"I managed very well," Hanzo grumbled. 

As McCree stuffed everything back into his bag, he thought of the paper crane tucked away. He unzipped the pocket and pulled it out; he was glad to find that it hadn't been damaged by all the water and running around. He held it up in his palm to one of Hanzo's eyes. "Do you know what this is?" 

"Origami," Hanzo said.

"Thanks, Hanzo. I couldn't see that for myself," McCree said, his tone dripping with sarcasm, and after rolling his eyes in exasperation, he tried again, "Yeah, it's origami. But do you know where I got it? Do you know who made it?"

"Please enlighten me," Hanzo growled.

" _You_ made it, Hanzo. When you was a kid. And you mailed it to Yaeko. Do you remember?"

Hanzo's huge pupil focused on the origami crane. "No."

Did this man have no heart whatsoever? His complete disdain for anything sentimental was astonishing. "Come on, Hanzo. You made a thousand of them with your class and sent them to some peace museum or somethin'." 

"Hiroshima," he said, "Yes. I remember now. She kept that thing?" 

"She kept _everything,_ Hanzo," McCree said, returning the crane to its safe place in his pack, "Did you know she's got a photo album of you since the day you were born?"

"I did not."

"I saw some real cute pictures of you, Hanzo," McCree teased him, "Like when you did that children's tea ceremony event."

"Oh, God," Hanzo groaned, rolling his eyes.

"Or when you 'n Genji took karate together!" 

"You have to stop," Hanzo said, "I would cover my ears, but my arms aren't long enough."

McCree slapped his thigh and laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. Hanzo's body shook against his back, and he realized Hanzo was laughing, too, his lips pulled back in a terrible, toothy smile. He grabbed one of Hanzo's whiskers and gave it a playful tug. "Hanzo, you know I wouldn't force you to meet with Yaeko if I didn't think she could help," he said. It was a risky change of subject, but technically Hanzo _had_ agreed to it, back in the mines. At least, he hadn't fought McCree about it again. McCree figured that was as close to agreeing as he was going to get out of the dragon. "I'll take the train to go get her, and we can be back tomorrow."

Hanzo's grin fell from his face, his brows knitting together. McCree braced himself for more excuses, but then Hanzo surprised him, "Jesse... Please do not leave me here alone."

McCree turned to stare up at him, struggling to find words. It was the last thing he had expected Hanzo to say, after their full day of bickering. 

Hanzo took his silence for uncertainty. "I don't want to die alone here in these woods," he said, closing his eyes.

McCree wanted to tell him not to be so dramatic and that he wouldn't die here at all, but, really, McCree just didn't know. He pulled himself up to his feet and pushed his face into the dragon's mane, embracing him as best as his human arms could manage. "I won't leave you alone," he promised him, "I'll call Yaeko. Maybe she can come to Hanamura on her own. Then we can fly up to Hanamura like last night and meet her there."

He felt Hanzo nod against him.

"I've got enough charge on this phone and wiFi thing to give her a call," McCree told him, "But soon, I'll need to charge them both. And I'm dyin' for some food that ain't from a plastic wrapper. So I may need a few hours up there to get some things done, okay? But I ain't leavin' you alone. You'll wait for me?"

Again, Hanzo nodded. McCree ran his arms through the golden mess of fur, breathing in his scent, which was earthy and musty. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was definitely animal and not human. Hanzo said, "Will you do me two favors in Hanamura?"

"Sure. What are they?"

"I will need more food," he said, "My metabolism is slower, but still - "

"No need to explain. I'll get you whatever I can. What's the second one?"

"I wish for you to see if the hotel I was staying at still has my bow. It is my prized possession, and I left it behind after my transformation. I would like for you to retrieve it and keep it safe, and, in case I die, I wish for you to give it to Genji," Hanzo explained.

"You got it," McCree said, "But you could give it to Genji yourself, you know? He wants to see you."

Hanzo clenched his teeth, and it was clear he was biting back some aggressive words.

McCree sighed. He really felt that reuniting the brothers would do wonders for Hanzo, maybe even break his curse, but he wasn't going to push it. Let Hanzo speak with Yaeko first. He had to let Hanzo do this on his own timeline, or else he would never come to trust him. "Okay, you can't right now. That's okay. But I'm gonna call your aunt. Yeah?"

"Yes. If you must."

McCree wasn't sure why, but he felt like stepping away to find somewhere private to make the call. He took his phone and the portable WiFi device from his bag and wandered up to one of the crumbling hallways on the second story, where he hoped Hanzo couldn't hear him. He really had to do some hunting for a place to sit on the floor that didn't look like it'd kill him to sit in, due to a combination of broken glass and loose nails and rotting boards. His phone had no service out here in the woods, but when he turned on the WiFi, it was able to get a weak signal. As soon as it was connected, a notification popped up that he had missed several calls from Genji and Lena. For the moment, he ignored this and opened his contacts, tapping Yaeko's name. It began to ring, and McCree wondered what he would do if Yaeko didn't answer. The woman was busy running her own successful ryokan. Perhaps he should try to look up the number for the front desk? 

But on the fourth ring, the call was answered, and her gentle voice said, "Hello, Jesse McCree! Do you have any good news for me?"

He smiled just to hear the sound of her voice. He wasn't sure that the news he had was good, but it was something. And something was a hell of a lot better than nothing. "Well, I do got some news, Miss Yaeko. But I think it's best for you to hear it in person. Can you come up to Hanamura and meet me at the castle?"

Yaeko hummed to herself as she thought, "Our guests in town for the convention will be checking out tomorrow. I can book a flight and be there sometime in the evening."

"The sooner the better, Miss Yaeko," he said. In fact, he wished she could get down there on the very next train. 

"Jesse, please, just tell me... have you found him?" she asked, and he could hear the hope in her voice. 

"Yes. I found him. He's with me." 

" _Yokatta!"_ she cried, and he could hear her begin to weep on the other end of the line, "Oh, Jesse! I can never thank you enough! The Shimada family will be indebted to you eternally!"

"Hey, ma'am, calm down, now," he said, feeling a blush creep up to his cheeks. He was glad Hanzo wasn't around to see how much this woman flustered him, "You did half of the work. He was right were you said he'd be. So don't give me all the credit."

"But I never could have done it without you," she said, sniffling, "Jesse, I will be there as soon as I can be! It's a short flight, just perhaps two hours. And then I will take the train from the airport to Hanamura."

"I'll come pick you up from the station, if you give me a call beforehand," McCree told her, "see you tomorrow, Ma'am."

"Yes! Yes! I will see you soon. Thank you, Jesse McCree!"

It was difficult to actually hang up the call, because Yaeko would not stop shouting her thanks, but eventually he pressed the end button and felt like he was able to breathe again. For a while, he just sat there, listening to the rain pelt the building and trying to catch his breath. Deep down, he was terrified that Yaeko would arrive tomorrow and would have no answers. He feared that this was as far as they could get with Hanzo, and that he'd have to break it to the man that he would be stuck a dragon now forever. Or, worse, that he would die in this dragon body, and that there was nothing anyone knew to do to prevent his fate. But McCree refused to acknowledge those fears. He would let himself worry about that when the time came. For now, there was another call to make. 

It was answered on the first ring.

"Jesse. We tried to call you all night."

"Sorry, Genji. There's been... well, there's a lot goin' on, to say the least. Please tell me you've figured somethin' out."

He heard Genji inhale, and McCree braced himself for some bad news. "Well, perhaps. Obviously, Overwatch does not have everything at its disposal that it once had. Lena has considered every one of our remaining airships, and we do not believe that any of them would support the weight of a dragon. Not without stripping all the seats, stopping a hundred times for fuel... there's just no way to make it work."

"Damn it," McCree growled, slamming his fist into the floor beneath him. Was this going to be the stupid thing that got in the way of his plan to help Hanzo? After everything they'd been through the past twenty-four hours, after everything _he_ had been through the past week, was this really the end of the line for him? Was Hanzo doomed to die out here in these mines? The thought made him strangely emotional, made him almost want to cry. He wouldn't even be able to move Hanzo's body to give him a proper burial. The dragon's corpse would just have to rot into the ground. Maybe this was the universe delivering karma for what Hanzo had done to Genji? But McCree didn't think Hanzo deserved anything like this, not anymore. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to Hanzo, most of all, but it also wasn't fair to him. He had allowed himself to get invested in this man's well-being. He _cared_. 

Shit. He actually cared. McCree exhaled. It seemed that whenever he began to care about someone, he was putting that individual at risk. Amari. Reyes. Now Hanzo. He was beginning to think the world wanted him to start keeping people at an arm's length. He couldn't do that to Hanzo, though. After everything he had seen, everything had learned, his and Hanzo's lives were tangled up together now, for better or worse. 

"We have another idea, though," Genji said, "There is one more option."

"What is it?"

"Well, Winston has been in communication with the government of South Korea. There has been some talks of Overwatch teaming up with MEKA. Nothing official yet, but we share similar goals."

"MEKA? You mean those piloted robot things?" 

"Yes, exactly," Genji said, "We have not told them or anyone about my brother, but Winston has made some hints in conversation with South Korea that we must do some international transporting of a large scale. They have agreed to loan us a cargo ship."

" _What_?" McCree was sure he had misunderstood what Genji was saying. There was just no way a country would loan an internationally criminalized organization like Overwatch an entire _cargo ship_ for no reason. It made no sense.

"A cargo ship, Jesse," Genji repeated, "They say it is an offer of good will, in hopes we will be able to work together in the future, but Winston suspects they making a jab at the United Nations. Technically, it is a private conglomerate offering the ship to us, so the United Nations cannot stop them from doing so, but it is a private conglomerate with ties to the South Korean government. Essentially, by doing this, South Korea is making a statement that they back us, without doing so in a way that jeopardizes their reputation in the United Nations. Winston believes that if Overwatch is formally recalled, South Korea sees ways that the country can benefit by creating ties between MEKA and Overwatch."

"That damn gorilla," McCree laughed, "I could kiss him on the mouth right now."

"I will tell him you said that," Genji teased him.

McCree's mouth hurt from how wide he was smiling, "Well, when does the ship leave? What's the plan! I'm ready. Hanzo is ready. Just tell us what to do."

"Well, the plan is that the ship will leave from Busan and stop at Hakata Port in Fukuoka."

"Genji," McCree said, "We can't walk a dragon up through a city that big. There's no way."

"Jesse, we don't have a choice. Anywhere less populated will not have a port large enough for a cargo ship," Genji argued. 

"Hanzo won't do it, Genji. He doesn't want to be seen this way. I mean, can you imagine? He'll be plastered all over the headlines. And South Korea will know in an instant what we're up to with their cargo ship, and that it ain't really Overwatch business at all."

"I do not know what to say, Jesse. We cannot just pull up into any port we desire. There are regulations about this. Lena and Winston have already looked into them."

McCree sighed and shook his fingers through his hair, which was becoming quite greasy. It was hotter than hell out here, and he was pretty certain he'd have already sweated to death if it wasn't for all the rain. He didn't know what to say. He knew without even having to ask that Hanzo would never risk being seen by the entire city of Fukuoka, and he didn't think it was wise for the world to find out that dragons were real, either. He couldn't imagine what Talon would do if they knew. At least if they had a ship, Lena could land it in the middle of a field or something, and no one would ever be the wiser. "Wait, Genji... what if we didn't use a port at all?" 

"I do not understand."

"I mean, what if the ship just passed by Japan, and me and Hanzo flew out to it. You'd never even have to stop, as long as you slowed down enough."

"Flew? Hanzo can _fly_? Then why do you need a ship to Gibraltar at all?" 

McCree shifted the phone into his cybernetic hand so that he could rub at his eyes with his flesh fingers, "Yeah, Genji. He can fly. But even he can't make a trip that long. What is it? Like ten thousand miles? It's pretty much the opposite side of the planet. Where does a dragon discretely stop for rest breaks, outside of maybe Siberia?"

"Okay, yes. I see your point. But how would you and Hanzo locate us, if we were not meeting at a specific place? We can use GPS coordinates, but a dragon cannot." 

Genji was right. There would have to be some landmark for Hanzo to fly to, some place with no people, or as few people as possible. Some place as isolated as this mine, but out in the middle of the ocean. "Holy hell, Genji. I got an idea," McCree said, and his mood did a flip from bad to good in the blink of an eye, "Listen, yer aunt told me that there's five thousand empty islands off the coast of Nagasaki. What if we picked one and met there? There's a place called... Gun.. Gunshima... Gunjima..."

"Gunkanjima," Genji said, "Yes. The abandoned mining island. I have heard of it. That might work, Jesse. If you and Hanzo can get to Gunkanjima, then we could meet you off the coast there."

"When? When can we meet?" McCree asked. He was so eager to get this over and done with. He wanted to get out of the forest! He wanted to shower and eat a big meal and, above all else, he wanted to get Hanzo back to normal. 

"That I do not know. Let me speak with Winston. It may take some time to work things out with our contact in Busan."

McCree scratched at his beard and groaned. More waiting. Waiting for Yaeko. Waiting for the ship. "I'll try to be patient, Genji, but I think me 'n Hanzo will both sleep a hell of a lot better once we've worked out the details of the plan."

"We are making good progress," Genji assured him, "We are much closer to resolving this. I will contact you again as soon as I know more."

McCree thought to inquire about the others. He wondered how they were doing, what they were up to, if they still missed him - but he lacked the energy for that kind of conversation. He just wanted to be out of these damn woods. So they ended their call with some weary goodbyes. Once he had turned his phone and the wiFi device back off, McCree leaned back against the wall and tried to collect his thoughts, but, for some reason, no thoughts would come. His mind was blank. He was simultaneously feeling so hopeful and so hopeless, so relieved and so scared, that he couldn't settle on any one way to feel. The rain was all he could hear over the silence in his mind. He picked himself up and returned downstairs, finding Hanzo waiting for him with a miserable look on his face. 

"Yaeko'll be comin' tomorrow," he told the dragon, "So if you can take me up to Hanamura sometime tomorrow, I can get all our errands done before she arrives."

Hanzo's lips pulled back in a grimace and he nodded his great head. 

"And I spoke to your brother, too," McCree continued. He watched Hanzo tense, but he didn't say anything, so McCree continued, "I think we've found a way to get you safely out of here and to Gibraltar. I'm just waitin' to hear back from him."

He could see that Hanzo wasn't pleased to hear this, but for once he shut his giant mouth and kept his negative thoughts to himself. The anger still blazed in his eyes, though; McCree could see it as plain as day. 

"And you know I ain't recruitin' you, right? You know you're free to leave whenever you want. Whenever we get you fixed. Do you trust me?"

"You keep saying that," Hanzo said. 

"I keep hopin' I'll have earned it, since the last time I asked," McCree said with a grin, "You'll let me know when it happens, right?"

"If that will keep you from asking repeatedly," Hanzo said, but he was smiling, too.

"Well, what do we do now?" he sighed, "Just sit and twiddle our thumbs, I guess? Well, you ain't got no thumbs, but - "

"Are you scared of a little rain, Jesse?" Hanzo asked. 

"No. While you was growin' up in your fancy ass castle, I was breakin' my neck outside rain or shine," McCree replied, "Why? You got an idea of somethin' we can do to pass the time?" 

"Perhaps," Hanzo said, and with that, he began to wiggle back out of the building, leaving McCree to chase after him. 


	12. Sunflowers

McCree had not lied; bad weather did not bother him. However, he found it must less fun to fly with the downpour stinging his eyes and face, sharp as needles. He burrowed as deep as he could into Hanzo's thick mane, using the dragon's body as a shield from the worst of it. He imagined that he could smell lightning in the air, and he wondered if he even stood a chance of surviving if they got struck by a bolt up here. Hanzo did not seem worried. In fact, Hanzo's usual scowling and sulking had been replaced with quiet excitement. McCree was not about to voice his complaints and risk ruining Hanzo's mood. 

"Hold on," the dragon said.

There came that weightlessness as Hanzo began his descent. McCree gripped Hanzo's neck with his thighs, digging his fingers into the dragon's scalp to keep himself from being thrown off. Wind whipped at his face, stealing his breath, and then - they were still. 

McCree lifted his head and looked around.

"Hanzo..." he breathed. 

As far as the eye could see, the earth was carpeted in vibrant yellow that stood out boldly against the grey skies. He wiped the rain from his eyes, to clear his vision, and only then did he understand. Sunflowers. Hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps even millions. At around six feet high, their brilliant heads were so densely clustered together that the ripples of wind between the stalks resembled waves upon a golden ocean. Precipitation glistened on their petals like jewels. The view stole his breath. He'd traveled the world and seen many stunning sights, but he would certainly have ranked this in his top ten. 

"When the skies are clear, you can see Fuji herself beyond the fields," Hanzo told him, "This place is crawling with tourists when the rain lets up."

A dirt path had been cleared for visitors to walk around, and Hanzo landed on one of its many branches. He was careful to keep his legs tucked in, so that he did not damage any of the delicate flowers. McCree slid off his back, sinking into about an inch of mud underfoot. The sunflowers towered around him, as though being beside Hanzo was not making him feel small enough. He reached up, cupping one yellow head in his palms, and brought it down to his face, breathing in its vegetal, fertile aroma. 

"Genji and I used to play hide and seek here as children," Hanzo said, "Until one day, he got truly lost and refused to come back."

McCree barked in laughter, spinning around to face the dragon. The trickles of rain over his cerulean scales made his body look like a moving river. As incredible as the sunflowers were, Hanzo was still more breathtaking to look at. "Oh, I can't wait to give him shit for that," he said, "He deserves it, after all those years in Blackwatch when he refused to laugh at my jokes."

"Are you sure that your jokes were not simply _bad_?" Hanzo asked.

McCree shared a smile with Hanzo, then strolled forward, holding his arm out to touch the stalks as he passed. Hanzo followed, the flowers along the perimeter of the path hissing against his scales. If McCree stared out ahead of him and did not turn his head to look back, he could almost imagine they were two men walking together and that everything was totally normal. "This is nice," McCree said. It was nice to pretend that Hanzo wasn't cursed and in danger, to pretend that the world wasn't preparing for another crisis around them, to just look up at all the flowers and not have to worry about Overwatch and the recall... He sighed. 

"When I was in high school," Hanzo said, "I took a girl here once on a date."

"Why, Hanzo," McCree said, spinning around to flash him a grin, "Is this a date?"

" _What?_ "

"C'mon, Hanzo," McCree teased him, "It's a pretty romantic place."

Hanzo growled, "I should eat you."

"Hanzo!" McCree gasped, "At least wait for the second date before we do somethin' like that!"

"You are insufferable."

"I bet yer father'd roll over in his grave if he knew you was datin' an American," McCree continued.

"Is that what you'd like? A date?"

McCree froze, and for a long, still moment, he could hear his own pulse in his ears. His brain tried to generate a witty response, but despite all its churning, none would come to him. There was a tiny, flicker of hope there, like a match being struck in a vast and dark room, but as soon as the flame was lit, it had fizzled out, consumed by the shadows. All he could think about, in a vague and disconnected way, was Hanzo's curse. How had Yaeko described it? A man with a weak spirit, more monster than man. A man with no love for himself _or for others_.

It felt like he was thinking about this for quite a long time, but it was really just a second before Hanzo continued, "I have no interest in fulfilling _those_ kind of dragon fantasies." He wore a playful grin that suggested he was waiting for McCree to continue with the banter, but McCree was too preoccupied.

"I can't imagine you datin' someone," he said, finding control of his legs again. He turned to walk ahead once more, feeling Hanzo's warm breath beating down against his back.

"I did not enjoy it," Hanzo admitted.

"Yeah..." McCree replied with a sigh, "I get it. You don't wanna let yer guard down. It's hard to let others in. That kinda thing?"

Hanzo was silent, and McCree guessed that, while he had hit the nail on the head, it had been the wrong thing to say. He decided to change the subject.

"So, you can't breathe fire, but you _can_ fly. You got any other dragon powers?" he asked.

The rain was beginning to let up a little, turning into a slow and gentle drizzle. McCree looked out across the wall of sunflowers, wondering if the temperamental Hanzo was ever going to speak to him again, or if another fight was about to break out, but then the dragon said, "No, but my senses are much stronger."

"Really? How strong?"

"How do you think I found you?" Hanzo asked, "I could smell you. You were like a wet dog. And I could feel your heavy footsteps when I lay with my belly to the ground. Tiny vibrations of disturbance."

"Hey... I got an idea," McCree said, "Let's test your dragon senses out."

"I do not like the sound of this."

McCree was not put off by his reluctance, "Count to a hundred. I'm gonna go hide out in the flowers, and you're gonna see if you can find me."

"This is far too easy," Hanzo scoffed at him, "You underestimate how powerful my sense of smell is."

"Then prove me wrong!" McCree said, "Go on. Close your eyes. Count to a hundred. I promise I won't be a crybaby like Genji if I get lost."

"This is a child's game."

"Who the hell cares? We're the only people out here. Well, _I'm_ the only people out here, and you're the only dragon. If we did it, or if we didn't do it, it wouldn't make a difference to anyone on the whole planet but us."

Hanzo shut his eyes, and for a heartbeat, McCree thought it was just an expression of his exasperation, but then his low voice began, "One. Two. Three..."

McCree ducked into the tangle of sunflowers and ran. He dodged between the stalks, their wet leaves slapping at his skin. He could hardly see a foot or two in front of him, thanks to their tight growths. The world around him was green and yellow as far as he could see, except for the tenebrous storm clouds above. It took him only seconds to lose his sense of direction. Was he running away from the paths, or beside them? 

_Catch me, Hanzo_ , he thought, shielding his face with an arm so the reaching leaves didn't take an eye out. There was an electric tingle of excitement across his whole body. He wanted to be pursued. He wanted to be found. 

The waterlogged soil caught him, first, though - he skidded, his legs went out beneath him, and he dropped to his hands and knees in the mud, taking out several stalks of sunflowers in his fall. Cursing, he scrambled forward, his pace now hindered by the thick cake of muck on his jeans. 

What was the count at? It had to be seventy? Eighty? He crouched in the stalks and held his breath to try and silence his panting. There, he waited.

How long was he there? A minute? Maybe two? He had a thought - what if Hanzo didn't come for him? It sounded like the exact asshole joke that Hanzo might play, leaving him lost and alone in a maze of sunflowers. Obviously, he wouldn't be lost forever. The fields were huge, but they weren't more than he could walk. Still, he would be _pissed_.

Just as he was thinking this, a shadow passed overhead. He glanced up. The dragon was looming above him, hovering with his underside just inches above the sunflowers and his whiskers dragging between their stalks. "You are easy to track," the dragon said. 

McCree gave a shout of excitement and was off again, unwilling to be caught so easily. He wove through the sunflowers, shoving their thick stalks aside with sweeps of his arms, and Hanzo followed, so close that McCree could have jumped up to touch him.

"You cannot outrun me," Hanzo said.

McCree laughed and ducked back, running beneath the shadow of Hanzo's passing length. He heard somewhere above and behind him the rumble of Hanzo's laughter, loud as thunder, as he coiled around himself to turn and chase. It had been so long since McCree had just run free for the fun of it like this. His life wasn't in danger. Someone else's life wasn't in danger. It was just the thrill of moving, the rain in his face, and the heat of his pumping muscles in his legs. The stalks of sunflowers tried to slow him down, and the slippery mud under his boots, but he just kept pushing forward. 

One of those behemoth clawed hands reached through the canopy of sunflowers to pluck McCree out. McCree howled with excitement and fell to the ground on all fours. The talons swiped at the air above him, missing by inches, and he heard Hanzo's thunderous laughter as the shadow of the dragon soared past him, blocking out the sky. 

McCree took off in a new direction and scrambled back up to his feet. He could feel the shift in the air above the field as Hanzo changed course after him. 

As he ran, he thought - if only Hanzo had done this with his high school girlfriend. That date would have gone much differently. But, perhaps, he selfishly was glad it had not worked out. Where would he be now, if not for Hanzo's curse? On a train to nowhere, trying to dodge the law and the recall? Still roaming the southwest on Ashe's motorcycle? It was terrible of him, he knew, to take pleasure in Hanzo's misfortune, but... This was a moment of simple happiness in his life that he would never forget. 

McCree burst out of the sunflower jungle and onto one of the stretches of cleared walking paths. Hanzo was there, waiting for him. His vast blue body blocked McCree's way. Before McCree could turn and slip back into the tangle of stalks, the dragon's tapered tail whipped from out of nowhere, knocking McCree's legs from underneath him. He fell back into the mud with a grunt of pain, and Hanzo's head swooped into view above him. He looked pleased with himself. 

"Easy."

"Dang it," McCree said, flopping back into the muck and trying to catch his breath, "That was hardly a game at all."

"I told you," Hanzo sneered at him, "I know your scent too well."

"Do I really smell like wet dog?" McCree asked.

"You certainly do now. You're more mud than man, Jesse McCree."

McCree glanced down at his jeans, which were coated in mud up to the thighs. Now, his back was wet and caked in it, too. "Damn," he muttered. 

Hanzo snorted in laughter.

"What do I _normally_ smell like?" McCree asked, pulling himself up and grimacing at the feeling of the filth that seeped into his soaked shirt.

Hanzo looked thoughtful for a moment. "Tobacco, mostly. From your cigars. And... hmm... oil."

"From my arm," McCree said, waving his metal prosthetic. 

"Yes, and a little like fire and like earth." Hanzo rolled his head, lowering a horn to McCree. McCree jumped to grab it and was pulled up and into place, nestled in between Hanzo's horns. "You are getting my hair dirty."

From his tone, McCree could only imagine the scowl he must have worn. " _You_ were the one who wanted to play in the rain," McCree complained, thumping him on the skull with a fist, "This was your doing."

"Let's go clean you up," Hanzo said, and before McCree could even think to hold on, the dragon kicked off and was floating up - up - up -

McCree yelped and snatched handfuls of hair, clinging to Hanzo for dear life as the dragon pierced through the curtains of rain. The field of sunflowers became just a tiny patch of yellow at their backs, and then it was gone. McCree shoved his face into the warmth of Hanzo's mane, no longer interested in seeing the world shrink beneath them, just wanting to get out of the harsh wind. He thought of the boy in the photographs, always held down by the chains his parents put upon him. McCree's lips stretched into a smile. The Shimada family had tried so hard to cage their scion, but he had always been destined to fly. 

But just as McCree had thought this, the dragon fell. 

McCree screamed in a combination of terror and exhilaration. They were plummeting so fast he could hardly breathe. He felt himself go weightless up off the dragon's back for a second time, but it wasn't any easier just because it was now familiar. Digging his hands deeper into Hanzo's golden tresses, he opened his eyes a crack and found they were nose-diving towards the canopy of the forest. A mist rose from the trees as they drank up the rain. He had only a second to admire the view before they were crashing through the branches, which stung like lashes of whips against McCree's skin. He tucked himself in tight against Hanzo, clenching his teeth. It felt like his stomach was floating up through his throat.

Any second now, he knew, Hanzo would jerk to a halt just like last time. He was teasing McCree once more, that was all. 

Except he didn't. Their freefall continued, and they dipped lower and lower to the forest floor, the trees breaking against Hanzo's huge body and snapping at McCree's limbs.

McCree shouted, "Pull up, you bastard! Pull up!" He slammed a fist into the dragon's hide. And he thought - Shit, what if something had happened to Hanzo? Had he gone unconscious? Given up and decided to die? Or was he dead already, the curse having taken its toll? "Hanzo!" he yelled, desperate for a response, but the rush of air stole the syllables from his mouth and carried them off on the wind.

He risked a glance at the ground below them. It was not ground. It was a small lake tucked into the forest, hardly more than a pond. Its grey waters stirred up into ripples from the rain. 

"Hanzo, you fu - !" 

The end of his sentence never had a chance to come out. Hanzo's body plunged into the lake, throwing great waves out over its banks. McCree managed to gasp for a mouthful of air before he was dragged under, water rushing up his nose. It was shockingly cold, terribly cold. His arms and legs churned the water, trying to swim free as Hanzo's sinking weight pulled him down deeper. He could see the light of the surface, so far out of reach.

Then beneath him, Hanzo was rising again, and he clung with shivering, frozen hands as they both came up, gulping down breaths. 

"Y-you f-fu-fuckin' _asshole_!" McCree stammered as he paddled for the edge.

Hanzo swam up beneath him, like an impossibly huge crocodile, and using his nose, he helped push McCree out onto the muddy land. Once McCree scrambled to his feet, dripping wet and trembling with cold, they looked at each other and began to laugh.

"I can't believe you did that," McCree said, once the laughter had left him and his cheeks hurt from smiling, "I thought somethin' was wrong."

"Something was wrong. You were filthy. And now you are not." Hanzo opened his mouth and drank down gulps of lake water before saying, "Come back in ~ " 

Then he sunk back under, a Japanese sea monster in this little lake in the woods.

McCree tugged off his boots and undressed, hanging his soaked clothes off nearby tree branches, although drying them was hopeless, as it continued to drizzle. He walked to the waters edge, his bare toes sinking in the muck and the water lapping at his feet. "When does the sun come out?" he asked of the pair of nostrils he could see poking out of the water. 

Hanzo's head lifted, curtains of water falling off his face. He really _did_ look like a sea monster, McCree mused. "The rainy season lasts into next month," he said, "but it won't rain every day. You'll have your sun back, soon enough."

A coil of Hanzo's body rose from the surface. Hanzo didn't have to say anything; McCree knew he was offering. He took a few steps deeper into the water and kicked off the bottom, swimming for Hanzo's back. Once he had climbed up and lay shivering against Hanzo's scales, he looked every bit the wet dog that Hanzo accused him of smelling like. "There's no rush," he said, sprawling out on his back, letting the rain beat down upon his face and stomach, "I'm enjoying myself." 

Against his spine, McCree could feel the faint flutter of Hanzo's heartbeat. Yaeko was wrong, he thought. Hanzo had a heart, and it was a perfectly normal one. Somebody just had to teach Hanzo to use it. 


	13. Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS MY BIRTHDAY TODAY (08/31) aaaaaaand for my birthday I wanted to gift all of you another chapter <3 lol thank you so fucking much for all of the kudos and comments. You all make me feel like I could do anything, and that's the number 1 best birthday gift the world could give me :D
> 
> This was originally a part of the next chapter, but I decided to split that up into two, because I didn't want my precious Yaeko to steal the spotlight from this scene. My guess of 20 chapters might be off, now, but we will see ~

Hanzo and McCree were glad for the bad weather the next day, as it allowed a descent into Shimada Castle under the cover of dark rain clouds. There were no sudden drops or mid-air barrel rolls this time, as both of them were in a serious mood: Hanzo was unhappy and thoughtful about the prospect of reuniting with Yaeko, and McCree was a man on a mission. He would head to the hotel first, where he would inquire about the Storm Bow. Hanzo seemed convinced that the bow would still be there. McCree hoped it would be, but was not so certain. If this had happened to him in the United States, one of the hotel staff would have taken the bow out of the lost and found by now and pawned it for rent money. While at the hotel, he hoped to check into a room long enough to charge his phone and portable WiFi device, take a shower, order a huge meal via room service, and maybe even wash a load of clothes if they had a coin laundry. His next plan was to find another grocery store to buy as much fish as he could carry, and then it would be time to go to Hanamura Station to pick Yaeko up. 

"You'll be okay here alone?" he asked Hanzo, after he had hopped off his back and slung his bag over his shoulder. 

"I am a dragon," Hanzo said, "What is the worst that could happen to me?" He rolled his eyes. 

McCree merely shook his head and threw the middle finger up at him before turning for the gate, but a small, cold voice in his head thought - _You could die_. That was the thing, wasn't it? Neither of them knew a damn thing about what would happen to Hanzo from one minute to the next. Any second now, the curse could finish its course, and McCree was helpless to stop it. And somehow, against his will, McCree had become too involved. He cared too much, now. Finding and helping Hanzo had once been a favor for a dear friend, but now he knew that, if he failed, he would be left _devastated_. It would be losing Overwatch all over again. Maybe worse. 

McCree had expected that Hanzo, as the scion of the Shimada family, would have stayed in some gigantic Western-style hotel with tremendous chandeliers and marble floors and gilded everything, but he was surprised. It was, instead, a small, forgettable building across the street from Hanamura Station. The lobby was nice enough, very clean but also very humble. He was greeted in Japanese by the uniformed man behind the front desk. Hanzo had taught him a single question in Japanese, but he found that the words were escaping his memory. He fumbled through it as best as he could recall - " _Sumimasen, eigo ga wakarimasu ka?"_

The hotel employee looked uncomfortable. "Sorry," he said in English, "Sorry."

McCree swore under his breath. So the guy didn't understand English. This was going to make inquiring about the bow particularly difficult. Maybe he could mime the action of drawing the bow? But before he could make a fool of himself, the man had disappeared. 

Whelp. That hadn't worked out as planned. Had he messed up the Japanese? Perhaps he'd said something offensive? He looked around, desperate for some kind of help. Maybe there was another hotel guest or staff member around who might be able to step in? But the lobby was empty. He found himself passing the seconds by looking over the rack of tourism pamphlets beside the front desk. They were advertising places like aquariums, museums, zoos, and religious sites.

Damn, what he wouldn't do for a smoke right about now. 

The man came back, accompanied by a second employee. "I can speak a little English," he told McCree.

It was a lie; he spoke a _lot_ of English. McCree explained how a friend had been staying here, but then had suddenly needed to be hospitalized. It was a story he had crafted in his head while walking from the castle. He gave them the name Hanzo Shimada, as well as the room number he had been staying in, and a rough description of his belongings. The two communicated in rapid Japanese, but then their faces both lit up. He was told that Hanzo's bill had already been charged to his account and that all of his belongings had been kept in the back. They both expressed their hope that Hanzo would recover quickly, and then they slipped down the hall to go and fetch his things. There was a single duffel bag and a case, which McCree knew contained the Storm Bow. He thanked them about a million times, and they both bowed, and he bowed back, feeling like an idiot. Then he inquired about checking in. 

All that he really needed was a shower. He'd been out in the wilderness for days now, with nothing more than a jump in a lake to wash the filth off his skin. He was so damn glad for the scalding hot water and the squirt bottles mounted in the shower wall, which contained all the shampoo, conditioner, and body wash a man could need to scrub himself clean. He nearly wept for the opportunity to use a real toilet, and to brush his teeth at a real sink. He even trimmed his beard a little, sharpening up the lines which had grown fuzzy with stubble. He decided that, once he got back to Gibraltar, he would start taking long baths every single day just in celebration of indoor plumbing. Returning to the woods would be almost miserable. 

With all of that taken care of, his picked up all of his and Hanzo's things and went downstairs to the hotel's coin laundry. While he waited for the washing and drying cycles to complete, he sat next to an electrical outlet, bag filled with fast food cheeseburgers and fries in hand, and charged both his phone and the portable WiFi device. He saw that he had a few missed calls from Genji and decided to return them, not bothering to do the math to figure out what time in the morning it was over there. 

"Hey, any word yet on that cargo ship?" he asked. 

"We're all set to go," Genji reported. His tone was more cheerful than McCree had heard in days. "Last I heard, they're emptying the ship of all unnecessary weight right now as we are speaking. As soon as you get to Gunkanjima, the ship will be ready to set sail."

"Genji, that's the best damn news I've heard in my whole life," McCree said, "How long will the ship take to get there?"

"It's only six hours away, if the ship is traveling at full speed," Genji answered, "Then it will be roughly a two week journey to get the both of you to Gibraltar."

McCree was so relieved he could have wept right there in the laundry room. He finally felt like he could take in a real lungful of air. He took a huge celebratory bite of his burger. The taste nearly drew a moan of bliss from him. 

"How is Hanzo?" Genji asked. 

"He's good," McCree said, swallowing, "As good as he can be, I mean. Obviously he ain't too happy about bein' a dragon, 'n all."

"I hope he is not proving difficult to get along with," Genji said, "I know he is rather temperamental."

McCree stared at the washing machine, watching the soapy water splash against the window. "Yeah, he's temperamental as Hell," he agreed, "and we ain't really getting along at all. But it's no problem. I like him, Genji."

"You like him?"

"Yeah." He shoved more of the cheeseburger in his mouth.

"What does that mean?" Genji asked. 

What did that mean? McCree wasn't even certain himself. It was hard to think too much about the subject in any concrete way, because there was no telling what would happen once Hanzo was a man again and no longer relied on McCree for anything. 

Before he was forced to answer, Genji's voice came through the phone again, "I suppose you were always close with Reyes, too, and he was also disagreeable." 

_Ouch_. They still hadn't really discussed their Blackwatch past yet, not in any meaningful way. McCree knew that Genji harbored no warm feelings towards their former boss, but the man was dead now. It felt wrong to say anything negative about him. Especially when he had plenty of good days to balance out the bad. He had a playful streak, which was why he and McCree had always gotten along so well. While the end of Blackwatch had been a nightmare, McCree had many cherished memories from back then. 

"Yer brother is worse," McCree said, "In fact, I think I've met nicer Talon members." Genji couldn't see his expression and likely couldn't tell from his tone, but he was smiling. 

"Well, hopefully he will be out of your hair soon enough," Genji said, "But I hope you can continue to overlook his flaws. He could use a friend like you."

The washing machine's cycle ended, and McCree pulled himself up to his feet to shift the load into the dryer. As he moved the wet clothes, he asked, in the most casual tone he could manage, "Genji, what happens if we can't get Hanzo back to human?"

"I do not know. Jesse, truthfully, I have my doubts that we can do anything. This is magic that we do not understand." 

McCree had been afraid that was Genji's answer. He closed the dryer door and pushed his hundred yen coins into the machine. What could he say in response to that? Genji was just mirroring his own fears. 

"I wish that he could have overcome his guilt and found peace," Genji said, when McCree did not respond, "I fear it may be too late now."

McCree could not find his voice. All this time, he had been internally thinking the same things, but hearing Genji express these fears aloud made them too real for his liking. 

"This is my fault," Genji said, "I should not have left him alone. I should have insisted that we move forward. I should have forced him to join Overwatch, or else remained in Hanamura with him... None of this would have happened if I had made other choices. My master, Zenyatta, would say otherwise, but he is not with me, so all I have is this guilt that weighs upon me. I try to meditate. I know I should not blame myself. Yet I cannot shake these feelings."

"He don't blame you, Genji," McCree said.

"No, I am sure he blames himself."

"You've done a hell of a lot more for him than most people would've. He'd still be hidin' out in the woods, if you hadn't sent me to look for him. Soon, he'll at least be safe with us."

"It gives me some relief, to know we have at least done this much for him."

There was silence on the phone for a while, as McCree sat back down and let his eyes follow the clothes tumbling past the dryer window. He wondered what time it was, and how much longer until Yaeko arrived. He also wondered what Hanzo was doing right now, as he waited for McCree's return. He sighed into the phone and ran a hand through his hair. "Genji, if Hanzo dies... I don't think I'm gonna be okay." The confession had him suddenly choking with emotion. He couldn't get out any more words to elaborate. He filled his mouth with fries so that he wouldn't say anything more.

Genji did not speak up for a long time. McCree wondered if the call had been disconnected, but he didn't have the heart to check. Then, he heard Genji say in a small voice, "At least he will not die alone." 

The words wrapped around McCree's windpipe, making it almost impossible to breathe. He thought of Hanzo's words - _I don't want to die alone here in these woods._

"Genji. I have to go. I need to get back to Hanzo." 

* * *

When he arrived back at the castle and did not immediately see a dragon, the dread that McCree felt was needle-sharp in his spine. He would never forgive himself. He had left Hanzo alone to go do idiotic errands, when really all he had needed to do was call the hotel. Shimada Castle had electricity, which he could have used to charge his phone and contact Genji. What had he been thinking? 

He found Hanzo in the castle's main, largest building. His head was in the doorway, with his body stretched out behind him and coiled around itself in the huge, empty entrance hall. His eyes were closed. McCree ran to him, their bags and the bow's case beating against his back with each stride, when Hanzo's mouth stirred. "You smell clean."

McCree set their things down on the ancient floorboards, and he flung himself at Hanzo. He was torn between laughing and screaming, but he settled on pressing himself against the dragon's snout and stroking his nose. _I'm glad you're okay,_ he wanted to say, or _I was scared somethin' had happened to you,_ but he couldn't draw the words out of his own throat. 

"Did you retrieve my bow?" Hanzo asked. 

"I did," McCree said. 

If Hanzo had once been averse to being touched this way, then he didn't seem to be so anymore. In fact, his lips pulled back in a slack smile of contentment. His eyes remained closed as he enjoyed McCree's hands on his skin. He tilted his head closer, and McCree ran his palms down those tremendous cheeks. It was like rubbing the side of an elephant.

"Why are you back early? And without food?" Hanzo asked him. 

"Yeah, I uh... I came back to drop the stuff off. So I could carry more food back," McCree lied. He was proud of that one; he had come up with it on the spot. Of course, he would not have been able to carry their things and a whole store's worth of seafood back to the castle. It made _so much sense_ to come back and empty his hands first. Hanzo seemed to accept that answer, too. He just lay there, possibly falling back asleep, while McCree pet him like a dog.

It could have been a nice moment, something warm and fuzzy to store in his memories, like the trip to the sunflower field the day before, but McCree felt something rough scraping against his fingers that drew him out of his thoughts. He looked down at Hanzo's face, and what he saw made him recoil. McCree bit down on his lip to swallow back a gasp of horror.

Hanzo's scales were sloughing off as McCree touched him. The flakes of scales clung to his palms and pricked at his skin, their edges as fine as thorns. It was like Hanzo's hide was disintegrating, leaving behind unsightly raw patches of exposed flesh. 

"Are you okay?" he asked Hanzo. He brushed the scales off his hands on the back of his jeans. It was taking all of his effort to maintain a neutral face, so that if Hanzo opened his eyes and looked up at him, he wouldn't see the dread that McCree felt to his core. It was happening; he was convinced - the curse was getting stronger, or Hanzo was getting weaker, and then what would happen? McCree thought he knew, based on what Yaeko had told him, but he didn't want to consider it. He _had_ gotten to Hanzo in time. He refused to believe anything else. They would be in Gibraltar in two weeks. He wouldn't die. He couldn't die. 

"Of course. I am just tired. Are _you_ okay? You are being uncharacteristically quiet."

"Yes," McCree lied, "I'm just... I'm tired, too."

"Then rest with me," the dragon said, "We still have time."

McCree knew that Hanzo was referring to the hours that they had before Yaeko arrived, but he couldn't stop the flood of horrible thoughts that washed over him. Yes, they still had time. But for how long? He was being constantly reminded now of Hanzo's mortality. Soon, that time would run out. He sat down on the wooden floor with his back against Hanzo's face. Hanzo's head, behind him, leaned into his weight. Perhaps the scales were peeling off due to the superficial wounds he had received while down in the mine? That was what he convinced himself. McCree stared out at the weak drizzle of rain, watching drops slide off the gazebo outside. The rain didn't look beautiful today, as it had yesterday. It looked dreary, instead. And everything felt soupy and humid. He hated the idea of going back out in it. He turned away from the garden, pushing himself into Hanzo's mane. 

"Do not get too used to this," Hanzo warned him, "When I am a man again, I will not stand for you to be all over me."

"I won't want nothin' to do with you then. All of the parts of you I like'll be gone," McCree teased him, "Only the asshole parts'll be left."

"That is a double negative," Hanzo said. 

"A double wh- oh, _fuck you_ , Hanzo."

Hanzo laughed, and McCree was pressed in so close to him that he could feel the rumble of that laughter as it shook his whole serpentine body. McCree dug his hands in deeper, all the way to the scalp, and let himself get buried in all of that feather-soft, golden hair. "When yer a man again, you'll miss this," he said. 

Hanzo yawned, a sound like the roll of distant thunder, and then he replied, with a smile, "Perhaps."

The dragon dozed off, with the man asleep against him, and the rain fell upon Hanamura, as thick and hot as tears.


	14. The Dragon's Great-Aunt

The last time that McCree had made his grocery run for Hanzo, it had been an obscenely early hour of the morning, and no one had been around. Now, he felt like a lunatic, walking to the train station with his arms bearing the weight of twelve plastic bags filled with fresh seafood. He stuck out like a sore thumb here already, but that evening, it seemed like all of Hanamura was watching him with suspicion. It was just after dusk, and the streets were bustling with commuters, every restaurant and bar that he passed was busy and loud, and he had to weave between passersby on the crowded sidewalks. It all made him anxious to get Yaeko and return to Hanzo. At least the rain had stopped, he thought, although the whole city felt waterlogged from it all.

McCree had just turned the corner on the final stretch when he saw it. Anyone else would not have caught the moment on the rooftop, but he noticed it out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps it was thanks to the years working alongside Genji, who scaled buildings like he was half-alley cat, that had trained him to be hyper-vigilant of everything above him. Maybe it was just because of his quick, sharpshooter's eyes. It was the glint of the city's neon lights reflecting off something that didn't belong up there, right on top of the convenient store across from the train station. 

McCree slipped into a nearby department store, finding himself surrounded by DSLR cameras and lenses and digital picture frames for sale. Why had the movement raised his alarm? Surely it was nothing. But that was what he had told himself at the start of this mess, when he had sensed that Genji was following him back at the motel on Route 66. No. This time he wouldn't shrug it off. This time he would pay attention to his gut. Pretending to study a sales flyer taped to a display, his eyes moved back up to the convenient store's rooftop. There was no mistaking what he saw. While the night was dark, the city was alive and filled with light. Even at this distance, he could make out the black, white, and red armor. It was a Talon soldier. And his experience had taught him that, where there was one Talon soldier, there were more nearby.

What the hell was Talon doing in Hanamura? 

McCree took out his phone. _Change of plan_ , he texted Yaeko, and then asked her to meet him at the store instead. Then, he opened an app on his phone to request a taxi pickup from there. Damn, his heart was racing. He wished that he could somehow let Hanzo know, and he wished that Yaeko was back at home safe. More than that, he wished he was not in a country that made it impossible to keep Peacekeeper on his hip. He felt helpless without his revolver, which was still in its case with his things. His hand kept moving to its phantom weight on his belt, and he had to remind himself that it wasn't there to rely on. 

As he hovered by the camera displays, considering what to do, his initial rush of panic began to feel foolish. Of course Talon knew that they were looking for Hanzo in Hanamura; Jesse had told them so himself when he had reached out to Sombra. Talking to her had been a damn fool thing to do. But they had no idea whatsoever that Hanzo was a dragon, or that he was here, or that the sweet old woman about to walk up to this department store was related to the missing Shimada brother at all. They were just looking for McCree. Thankfully, he wasn't wearing his usual clothes, and the streets were chaotic with moving bodies. The sooner that he got out of Hanamura and back into those woods, the safer all of them would be. 

Assuming he wouldn't be followed back to the castle. Or that he hadn't been followed already. 

As a precaution, he came up with an idea. He moved to the back of the store and took the elevator up to another floor, where they had men's clothing for sale. He found the largest size men's hooded sweatshirt that the store had - some hideous thing with an anime super hero on the front - and he purchased it, tearing the tags off and pulling it on over his head right there in front of the register. Then, he went downstairs to another floor and found suitcases. Grateful for the money Yaeko had given him, he purchased the cheapest one that they had and packed it full of his groceries. The young employees at the store all gawked at him. He didn't care. At least this would throw off anyone who had followed him, if there had been anyone at all. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but he wasn't going to take any chances. 

By the time he made it back to the street-level, Yaeko was there waiting for him. He didn't even spare time to properly greet her, he just grabbed the single rolling suitcase she had brought with her and guided her to their waiting ride. The trunk popped open automatically for him to toss in their luggage. 

"Is something wrong?" she asked him. She eyed him up and down, from the anime hoodie to the suitcase he dragged along. This woman was no fool, McCree knew. There was no point in lying to her.

"It's probably nothin'," he told her, "I'm just making sure that I wasn't followed." He wanted to play it off, because he knew that if he raised the alarm, then this meeting would be ruined. The moment that Hanzo thought Talon was involved, he would call off the reunion and want to head straight back to the mines. He'd be furious with McCree for putting Yaeko into danger. If he wanted to save Hanzo, he had to worry about Talon on his own. And, still - he reminded himself - it was possible that this had nothing to do with them. Talon had always had ties with the yakuza. Their presence in Japan wasn't exactly a secret. Surely, he was just overreacting. 

She looked away from him as she slid into the back seat of the car, but he could see there was some intense emotion in her face, perhaps even grief. "I did my research on you, as well, Jesse McCree," she admitted to him. 

Well, that was certainly the last thing that he wanted to hear. He knew information about the crimes he was accused of committing was all over the internet, but he liked to hope that no one ever chose to enter his name into a search engine. "Ma'am, I can explain -" 

"You do not need to. I trust you," she said, her gaze moving back to his, "Please, Jesse. Do not do anything to disappoint me."

He grinned and slid in beside her, slamming the car door. "I'd never, Ma'am."

She chatted with the driver for a bit in Japanese, presumably giving him the address to Rikimaru Ramen, which she and McCree had agreed upon. It was close enough that they could walk the rest of the way to the castle, without being too close to arouse suspicions about why a foreigner and an old woman were on a dark, empty strip of road that was historically crawling with yakuza. Once the car was moving, she turned to McCree and switched back into English. "How is Hanzo?"

He remembered that he had not told her anything about Hanzo's current condition. He felt guilty; she had probably been worrying herself sick since their phone call. "Well, like I said, I found him. He is alive, but I don't know that I'd say he's okay..." She nodded, staring down at her arthritic hands in her lap. Her worry seemed to age her. The frown lines around her mouth and beneath her eyes made her looked withered and frail. He reached for her hands, cupping them in his own, and he found them cold and trembling. "I don't know how to say this, so I'm just gonna come right out with it. Hanzo _is_ a dragon."

She looked up at him, and tears began to spill from her dark eyes. "So it was all true," she whispered, her fingers tightening around his, "And... And he will die?"

"I don't know," he admitted, tearing his eyes from hers to gaze at the lights moving past out the window. 

"There is no way to know," she agreed, "But what do you think?"

McCree inhaled, but he found that the breath felt too shallow. It didn't seem to fill his lungs all the way. "His scales started comin' off bad today," he told her.

"Perhaps that is a sign he is turning back."

"Maybe. But... Miss Yaeko, I'm so scared he's dyin'. I'm mighty fond of Hanzo. I know it's only been a few days, so it sounds crazy - "

"You do not have to explain yourself," she said. She grabbed his cheek and turned him to look back at her. Despite her tears, which continued to flow, the corners of her lips were curled in a smile, and it seemed to take some of the age back off her face. "Fate knows, better than we do, who we need in our lives and when we need them the most."

"I don't know about that," he said, "I feel like fate shoulda stepped in about two months ago, before he became a dragon in the first place. If only he'd met with you sooner, or if only Genji had - "

"Jesse, perhaps then, he would not have been willing to change," she said, and her fingers reached up to wipe aside tears that he hadn't even been aware he was shedding, "And perhaps then, you would not have been willing to change him."

"I don't think I'm gonna be the one to change him," he said, "that's all you 'n Genji. Credit where credit's due." He laughed a little, but it was a joyless sound, and his mouth just turned downward in even deeper a frown. 

"We can argue about who gets credit once he is well again."

"And if he dies?" McCree asked. His voice did not sound like his own. There was a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.

"We will face that hardship when - and if - it comes," she answered, "but our efforts were not in vain. I have my Genji back, after all these years, and you, Jesse, have both Genji and I, too. Hanzo has given us many gifts. The Shimada family is whole again. His death will not be meaningless."

McCree felt selfish, seeking comfort from a woman who was probably even more frightened and grief-stricken than he was, but he was so relieved to have her there. Her wisdom and love seemed to warm him, and he found himself able to take in a full breath of air again. He palmed away his tears, and Yaeko reached into her purse for a packet of tissues to dab at her own.

The taxi stopped in front of the ramen shop. He hopped out of the car and helped Yaeko to her feet as the driver went around to pull out their luggage. A line of waiting customers was wrapped around the street. The air smelled of roasted meat and the steaming, savory broth. Before McCree could even dig out his wallet, Yaeko was paying the driver. It gave him a second to scan the rooftops for more Talon agents, but in the direction of the castle, there were not enough lights to see by. He only hoped this provided them as much cover as it would Talon. 

McCree carried both suitcases up the road, not daring to make the noise of wheeling them, with Yaeko trailing behind him. He was just wondering whether Hanzo would hear if he knocked, when the huge wooden gate opened a crack for them. He couldn't help but smile - stupid, cocky Hanzo and his dragon senses. Of course their arrival had been noticed. McCree let Yaeko slip into the dark courtyard first. 

At the sight of Hanzo, her eyes went wide. Hanzo looked less like a majestic mythical beast and more like a whipped puppy, as he avoided her gaze and stared down at the ground. Then, Yaeko was crying, and she flung herself against him, stroking his scales and speaking to him in stuttering, rapid Japanese. 

McCree grinned, feeling himself welling up with emotion again. The threat of Talon seemed far away, for now. He moved for the bell tower, thinking perhaps he'd step away for a smoke and to give them their privacy. 

"Don't go, Jesse," Yaeko said in English, reaching a hand out to him. 

"I just thought the two of you would wanna catch up," he told her, and he knew that Hanzo wouldn't want him, of all people, around for a moment so vulnerable. 

"As far as I am concerned, Jesse, you are a part of my family. Hanzo and I have nothing to hide from you," she said, and then looked up at Hanzo's giant head, "Right, Hanzo? Do you still speak English?"

"Fluently," Hanzo replied, and McCree was relieved to see his face take on a look of irritation and haughtiness. At least he was still acting himself. 

"Where have you been?" she asked him, continuing to run her hands over his scales, "No. No. It does not matter. All that matters is that you are alive, and you are here."

She began to weep hard and loud, and Hanzo bowed his head to her level, letting her cling to the fur on his face. "Yes. I am here."

"I thought you were dead. You and your brother. I thought I had lost you both!"

Then Hanzo pulled back away from her, his eyes going dark. McCree knew what he was going to say before he said it, and he felt himself recoil even before Hanzo opened his mouth: "I killed him."

"What?" she whispered, raising an arm to him, but he was far out of reach. 

"Genji. I killed him. I tried to kill him. The reason you almost lost him was because of me."

"Hanzo-kun, shush. Let's not talk about that. Genji already told me everything," she said.

_Hanzo-kun?_ McCree almost laughed. Hanzo saw the smirk on his face and shot him a nasty scowl. 

"The past is the past, Hanzo-kun. Let us focus on your future, for now."

"How can you say that?" Hanzo snarled at her, "How can you just brush the events of my past aside? I was a monster, and now I look the part. I deserve this. I deserve to die." 

"You don't! Please, Hanzo. It hurts me to hear you say this. You have done bad things, terrible things, but you are more than your poor decisions. Genji let me know everything. You have done your repenting. It is now time to stop punishing yourself and make the rest of your life count. You still have many long years of life ahead of you. Use that time to be a good brother. Genji loves you more than you know. Your coldness hurts him worse than your sword did."

"Did you come all the way to Hanamura just to chastise me like a child?" Hanzo asked.

"Don't you dare talk to her like that, Hanzo!" McCree barked at him.

The dragon's head whipped around, teeth bared at McCree. His instinct was to sink back, away from those terrible fangs, but instead he drew himself to his full height and glared up into one of Hanzo's red, angry eyes.

"Forget what she says," Hanzo growled at him, "You are no family to me. This has nothing to do with you! You are a meddling stranger! Stop acting like you know what is best for me. You accomplished what you came here for. You no longer have to pretend to care." 

"Stop it, Hanzo!" Yaeko begged him, "Please!"

"If I didn't care, I wouldn't still be standin' here, dealin' with your shitty attitude!" McCree yelled up at him.

"Ha! You are glad for this convenient diversion to keep you away from dealing with your own life," Hanzo scoffed, snapping his teeth mere inches from McCree's upturned face. 

McCree just smirked. In that moment, he realized that Hanzo had changed. Maybe, once, he had been the kind of person to attack his own brother out of anger, but now he was a man whose devilish temper was all bark and no bite. Yaeko continued pleading with them to stop, but in that moment, he was deaf to her. He stood with his hands on his hips, glaring up into the dragon's terrible maw, and Hanzo scowled back down at him with nostrils flared. "Well you got me all figured out, don't you?" McCree said.

Hanzo muttered something in Japanese. 

"He says that you are a hypocrite, and that I shouldn't encourage you," Yaeko said.

"Don't translate that!" Hanzo growled at her. 

McCree snorted in laughter, and, with that, the tension was broken. Hanzo, still snarling to himself, coiled in the rock garden. Yaeko knelt on the wooden platform, right at the edge, and McCree sat down beside her, wearing a grin from ear to ear. Hanzo met his eyes, and McCree saw the humor in them, and maybe a little affection, too. They might fight like cats and dogs, but he had a feeling the real danger behind Hanzo's threats was gone. He began to feed Hanzo the fish he had purchased as he filled Yaeko in on their plan to take Hanzo to Gibraltar. She seemed to think it was a good idea, to take him someplace safe. In the meantime, she told them both that she planned to scour the Shimada family records. She asked Hanzo where he had been and what he had been doing, but Hanzo stubbornly refused to answer a single question, so instead she filled the both of them in on her own life - the J-Pop idol who had stayed as a guest recently, how that year they had made it onto a travel website's top ten list of luxury ryokan in Beppu, the mundane drama unfolding with her staff when one girl had confessed her feelings to the sushi chef they employed. 

"When this is cleared up, I think it will be good for you to come and rest there for some time. The hot springs are good for you," Yaeko said, and she turned her beaming face to McCree, "You will come, too, yes?"

"Yeah," he told her, "I'd like that."

She reminisced about the family and their past as the night went on, embarrassing Hanzo with stories from his childhood and sharing with him details of the lives of people he had once known. She seemed so content to speak, even though Hanzo barely opened his mouth the whole time. McCree listened to her stories, letting the words transport him to a past that was not his own. She talked endlessly, until she began to yawn. When she checked the time on her phone and saw that, at some point, night had become morning, she was horrified. "I never stay up so late!" she said. 

She stepped away a polite distance to call for a taxi. As soon as her back was to them, McCree said, "I do care, Hanzo."

"Drop it," Hanzo muttered.

"If I didn't care, I woulda gone home a long time ago."

"Shut up. What home would you have gone to?"

McCree glared up at him, "When I get you turned back, I'm beatin' the absolute shit outta you, Hanzo."

Hanzo's lips drew back into a smile, and then he gave a single chuckle. "Come try me now, Jesse. Come on. Hit me. I invite you to."

McCree spat in the sand at Hanzo's side, "At least _I_ still have my dick."

Hanzo bristled at this. "I still have mine! It is just in- "

"Please," Yaeko said, rejoining the pair, "No more fighting."

McCree felt his face turn red-hot. He was sure the shifting, squirming dragon above them would have been flushed, too, if he wasn't covered in scales. "We wasn't fighting, Ma'am," he siad, "This is just how we talk to each other."

Yaeko did not look convinced, but she changed the subject, "My taxi will be outside soon."

The mood became solemn again. Both man and dragon would be sad to see her go. 

"Hanzo-kun," she said, and he lowered his head for her to pet his snout, "I am so glad to see you alive. I will contact you if I find anything. Jesse has my phone number. Please keep in touch. Do not forget about me."

"I could never," Hanzo said. 

Yaeko released him and turned to pull McCree into a hug that was surprisingly fierce for her size. He squeezed her back with his real arm, careful not to hurt her. "Thank you for everything," he said.

Hanzo opened the gate just enough for her, but before leaving, she turned to face them both, "Be good to each other." Then the street outside was flooded with light as her taxi arrived, and she slipped through the crack with her luggage.

It occurred to McCree, with a pang of sorrow, that this could very well be the last time these two Shimada saw each other. He swallowed, clearing his throat, trying to keep his tears at bay.

"Why don't you go with her?" Hanzo asked, "There is no need for you to come back to the woods with me. You could stay in a hotel."

"No," McCree said. He didn't even have to consider it, "You're stuck with me."

* * *

The sky was brilliant that night, with the rain clouds finally cleared away. Every star glimmered diamond-bright against the void. McCree's whole body sagged with weariness, but instead of heading back inside the abandoned building to his makeshift camp, he lingered by the door to stare up at the breathtaking view. "Look," he said, pointing, "There you are."

"What?" Hanzo asked.

"There you are," McCree repeated, "Draco. The dragon."

Hanzo tilted back his head to follow the direction of McCree's pointing finger. It took him a few seconds to realize that McCree meant the constellation. Astronomy was not a knowledge he had deemed useful enough to learn, so he only knew the names of a few of the brightest stars, none of which were in Draco. He didn't bother actually trying to locate it. 

"You don't got constellations in Japan?" McCree asked, having noticed the way that Hanzo dismissed him.

"Of course. Don't be stupid," Hanzo muttered.

"The same ones?" McCree asked.

Hanzo was not certain if they had always had the same constellations, or if this was a development of modern times, but either way, he nodded his head and said, " _Ryuuza_."

"Huh?"

" _Ryuu_ is the Japanese word for _dragon,_ and _Ryuuza_ is the name of the constellation."

"Like _Ryuuza Ryokan_ ," McCree said.

"You are saying the _r_ wrong," Hanzo said, looking thoroughly unimpressed. 

"What about _star_?" McCree asked.

" _Hoshi._ "

"And _space_?" 

" _Uchuu._ "

It would have been nice to sleep out under the stars, McCree thought. Except it was sure to start raining again before morning, and if it didn't, then he'd wake up to it being ninety degrees outside again. So he returned inside, to his camp by the stairs, and Hanzo followed him, squeezing his body in through the halls as he had done before. When he dropped to his belly, McCree surprised him by curling up against him, his back to the dragon's giant scaled cheek, just as they had napped together at the castle. They went on like that for a while, just quietly exchanging words back and forth in the dark. Hanzo taught McCree the words for home and house, mine, foreigner, friend, and love. Then they moved on to curse words, as well as childish things - parts of the face, colors, and numbers up to ten. When he started to explain that some numbers in Japanese had more than one translation, McCree lost interest. 

"Will you eat me in your sleep if I stay right here?" McCree asked, rubbing his fingers over Hanzo's scales. They were flaking even worse now, almost turning to powder against his touches. There was no way that Hanzo wasn't aware of it. Did it hurt him?

What had Yaeko said earlier? _Perhaps that is a sign he is turning back._ McCree hoped so. He hoped so with his whole heart. Maybe they'd all just break away, and the real Hanzo would be left sitting there in a pile of his old scales. Would Hanzo look the same as he had in the photographs? McCree smiled to himself, thinking about how much he looked forward to, one day, seeing what Hanzo really looked like in person.

"It would solve many of my problems if I did," Hanzo said, drawing McCree back out of his thoughts. 

"You ain't wrong."

They were almost asleep together, their eyes closed and breathing slowed, when Hanzo whispered a confession, "Jesse. I used to want to die."

"What?"

"Every day, I chased death. I hoped it would come for me. The only thing that kept me from killing myself was my goal to wipe out the remaining Shimada clan. I told myself that once I had accomplished that, I would end my own life. Death seemed the only relief from pain and guilt I could not escape."

McCree swallowed. "I'm glad you didn't."

"I am glad, too," Hanzo said.


	15. The Two Dragons

McCree was flying. 

He knew that it was a dream, but he welcomed the escape from reality. 

It was a brilliant morning, the sun catching the clouds and casting everything in a heavenly white glow. He was soaring - wingless, the way that Hanzo flew - so high there was no sight of ground beneath him, only more of the cumulus fluff. In fact, where was the ground, and where was the sky? He had no idea. 

Was he a dragon, too? He looked down at his body and found that he was all man. Even his left arm was back, like it had never been torn off. He flexed his fingers, and they felt so real that he could have wept. 

_Where are you, Hanzo?_ he tried to ask, but he couldn't speak in this dream world. 

_Jesse!_

He heard Hanzo's voice respond to him, but he couldn't see the dragon anywhere. Maybe he was a man, too! McCree looked in all directions, hoping to find Hanzo somewhere in the clouds. 

"Jesse! _Jesse, wake up_!"

McCree was thrown back into his earthbound, one-armed body with a miserable groan. He rolled over and stretched his sore back, until the bones in his neck gave a small pop. When he opened his eyes, Hanzo's dragon head was taking up his entire line of vision. "Huh? What time is it?" McCree asked. The building was still in pure darkness; he could only just barely see Hanzo in the dim starlight that came in through the broken windows. It was nowhere close to dawn, he would guess. Meaning he'd been asleep maybe two or three hours at most. He felt weary to the core. His eyes fluttered closed again. All he wanted to do was return to his dream.

"Wake up," the dragon snarled, grabbing McCree's mat in his teeth and ripping it out from beneath him. 

McCree was flipped onto his face in the dirt. He grunted and pulled himself up on hands and knees to glare up at the dragon, but a yawn interrupted him before he could shout his protests. 

"There are people coming," Hanzo said.

That woke McCree up. He scrambled up to tug on his boots. "What? How can you tell?" 

"I can smell them, and I feel their steps... Jesse, there are _dozens_ of them."

"Well, maybe it's just hikers or somethin'?" McCree suggested, trying to be optimistic, even though he was already feeling dread in the pit of his stomach. 

"Hikers with guns?" Hanzo asked, "At three o'clock in the morning?"

"How d'you know they've got guns?"

Hanzo did not bother answering him. He began to back himself out of the building, and McCree stopped only to dig Peacekeeper and his gun belt out of her case before chasing after the dragon's receding head. Outside of the building, the forest was eerie and silent. There were no owls or frogs, no humming insects. The stillness only put him further on alert. Every hair on his body stood on end. 

"Hanzo," he said, looping his belt around his waist, "It might be Talon."

"Talon? Why would they be here?" Hanzo asked. 

There was no point in trying to keep the truth from Hanzo any longer. McCree sighed. "Well, I saw a Talon soldier in Hanamura when I went to go meet Yaeko. I really thought it might be nothin'. Hanamura used to be crawlin' with Talon in the past."

Hanzo turned on McCree, his eyes wide and wild, his nostrils flared. "There has not been a Talon presence in Hanamura for _ten years_. I have made sure of that myself. Why didn't you think to tell me?" 

"You have enough to worry about right now, don't you think?" McCree said, throwing his arms up to gesture at Hanzo's tremendous body. 

"Well, what are they doing here?" Hanzo snapped.

"I don't know!" McCree replied, although this wasn't entirely accurate. He had an awful suspicion of the reason, "I guess they're lookin' for me. Or for you."

"Talon knows where we are?" Hanzo asked, "How?"

"That might kinda be my fault," McCree admitted, "But there's no way they'd know we're out here in the woods."

"Wait," Hanzo snarled down at him, lowering his head so that his fangs hung inches from McCree, "It's your fault? How? What have you done, you _fool_!"

McCree reached up, putting his hands on the dragon's snout and trying to shove him away. It was like trying to push a city bus. He gave up with a roll of his eyes, putting his hands on his hips. "Well, when all this started, I asked a Talon member if they had you. So I guess they knew you was missin'. That's all. I didn't tell them where we were or anything."

"And do they know that I am a dragon?" Hanzo hissed, and his hot breath hit McCree in a wave.

"No. I ain't that big of an idiot, Hanzo. All I did was ask if you'd joined them. It was a little over a week ago, I guess. I haven't spoken to them since. I don't regularly talk with Talon. You must know that?" 

"I know _nothing_ about you," Hanzo said.

McCree was now too familiar with Hanzo's tactic of using sharp words as weapons; he barely batted an eye, whereas twenty-four hours ago, he might have been hurt. "Come on, Hanzo. This ain't time to argue. How far are they?"

Hanzo relented. He pulled back from McCree and took a few seconds to focus his senses on the impending danger. McCree watched those huge ears prick, those nostrils twitch, those eyes go wide. "They are very close. They will be here in mere minutes."

"Do we have time to get the hell outta here?" McCree asked.

"We shall fight them," Hanzo decided.

"You can't do that!" McCree argued, "You're a giant target. You'll get shot a hundred times before they're all taken care of."

"I will not run from my enemies," the dragon said, and McCree could tell from the look on his face that there would be no convincing him otherwise. 

"I ain't suggestin' you do," McCree sighed, shaking a hand through his hair.

What would Reyes do? No, he shouldn't look to that reckless bastard at a time like this. The last thing he wanted was for this to end up like Venice. What would Amari do? She was a planner, a tactician. He rarely ever accompanied her on missions - she did not do Blackwatch work - but whenever he had, she seemed to account for every possibility. Little took her by surprise. She didn't run in to enemy forces half-cocked the way that Reyes or Morrison did. She waited for the enemies to come to her. She set traps. She used her brains. 

"Okay, listen up," McCree said, "I think I got a plan." 

* * *

They came in on foot, which seemed like a bad sign to McCree. He was used to Talon dropping in from helicopters or airships. They wouldn't come out at night, in secret, this way. Not to take care of a pair of men hiding out in the forest. But, he thought, they might do so if there was a bigger target with more risk involved. Like a dragon. They had to know. That was the only explanation for this unusual tactic. His fears were only confirmed when he saw them, the lights on their armor piercing through the black night. First, he noticed the Heavy Assaults - eight of them. Talon didn't just send out eight Heavy Assault on every job. There were regular troopers, too. Dozens of them, just like Hanzo had said, but, judging by the lasers on their sights, they weren't carrying their usual weapons. In fact, to McCree, it looked like they were armed with tranquilizer guns. So it seemed that the Heavy Assault were there in case things got bad, but the goal was to take Hanzo alive. 

The Talon soldiers would have to pass the abandoned buildings before they could reach the mouth of the old mine tunnels in the mountain's side. A few of the troopers branched out of the platoon. McCree watched from his window on the top floor of the apartment building as they dimmed the lights on their armor and disappeared into the night. They were checking the ruins. Some of them, he knew, were beneath him right now, peeking into the ground floor of this building. He felt a twinge of anxiety, but he doubted they would check upstairs. Hanzo wouldn't fit into the staircases, so it would be a waste of time to look on the higher stories. Then again, did they really know how large Hanzo was? 

Peacekeeper was in his fist. It'd been close to two weeks since he last used her, and he was glad for her weight in his hand. She always gave off an electric energy when it was her time to shine, like she was a sentient thing that knew she was about to see some action. 

One by one, the troopers returned to the group. They seemed to be giving each building an all-clear. Just as he had guessed, they began to make their way towards the distant mouth of the old mine.

McCree waited, his palm sweating around the grip of his revolver. He longed for a cigar, but the light would draw attention to him up here in the darkness. Maybe one of these days, he'd finally listen to Angela and quit smoking.

He didn't understand how things had come to this. The past couple of days with Hanzo had many ups and downs, but overall they had been some of the most memorable days of his life. He had hoped for more days like them, just enjoying each other's company until they were given the call that the cargo ship was ready. Hanzo's walls were just beginning to come down. He felt he had been so close to really gaining Hanzo's trust. This drama was not something he had factored into his plans. 

Once the platoon was halfway between the building and the mine, McCree raised Peacekeeper. 

He opened his eyes wide and aimed for the red lights in the Talon armor. 

Time seemed to slow. 

Amari had taught him to aim, back when he was a teenager. Of course, by then, he had already known the ordinary man's method - the position of his legs, how to accommodate for recoil, those sorts of things. Amari discouraged all of that, dismissing it as nonsense, and she had started with him from scratch, as if he'd been a fool who had never touched a gun before. He had learned to aim with his eyes, not with his hands. And he had learned to see his revolver as an extension of himself; he would shoot with his mind, the same way that his mind controlled his fingers and legs and lungs. She had wanted to train him to become a sniper, and he would have been a good one, too, but he hated to sit and wait for anything. _Or I could make you a healer, like me,_ she had teased him, knowing well that he was far too reckless and that he barely got himself out of battles alive. Reyes and Morrison had done their fair share of educating him, too, but his sharp shooting - that was always thanks to Amari. He exhaled slowly and wished he could feel her ghost beside him, but he supposed that was selfish. She had her own biological family to haunt, Sam and Fareeha, and he couldn't expect her to keep supporting him from the afterlife. But still, how he ached for her to whisper in his ear whether his shot was lined up correctly. 

He fired.

Six shots cracked through the quiet night and echoed off the mountain slopes. 

He didn't wait to watch the six troopers fall at the rear of the platoon, although they did. He jumped away from the window, reloading as he did so, and ran for the safety of the other end of the building, listening to the shouts erupting outside. 

"There's someone in the buildings!" a man shouted.

In unison, they spun to face the ruins. The Talon soldiers all trained their eyes and guns at the windows and rooftops. One of the Heavy Assaults began to fire at random at the dark windows. McCree could hear the explosive bursts of his machine gun and feel the impact of his bullets shaking the entire building. 

Everyone was too preoccupied to notice the sight of Hanzo bursting from the mine's mouth, all majesty and fury. It would have been so climatic for him to raise up and give one of his deafening, mighty roars, but he stayed silent as he shot across the clearing. All backs were still to him as he tore threw the cluster of soldiers, knocking them aside like they were mere toys. He landed among them, crushing many beneath his weight, and with one swipe of his tail, he had them all face-down in the earth. He took a Heavy Assault in his jaws and broke the armor with a snap of his teeth, spitting the flesh and metal out into the scrambling mass of Talon soldiers. They began to scream, pushing each other down and scrambling over one another's bodies in an effort to escape. He grabbed fistfuls of them, crushing them in his mighty palms, their blood splashing across his scales, staining them violet.

"Stop him!" one trooper screamed, and fired a single dart into Hanzo's thrashing tail.

Hanzo turned on him and drew back, like a cobra about to strike.

" _Ryuu ga waga teki o kurau_!"

As McCree peered out another window, keeping low to avoid being shot, he witnessed what seemed to him to be a miracle.

A second dragon grew into existence out of nothing, a beast just as huge and just as terrible as Hanzo himself, except this dragon was made of blue lightning, shining neon-bright in the darkness. The sparks charged across Hanzo's scales, too, and the pair cast a brilliant glow upon the forest. Even from this distance, McCree could hear the crackle and sizzle of electricity in the humid summer air. It was like Genji's spirit dragon, but it was also _nothing_ like Genji's. Genji had his dragon tame and under control. This thing was wild and vicious. Together, the twin dragons gave bellows of fury and made their strike. They spiraled around each other's serpentine bodies as they razed through the soldiers, and McCree watched, his jaw to his chest, as _everyone they touched fell to their death_. 

There was no blood, no carnage. Just people whose souls had been ripped away by the horrible magic of the two dragons.

"Son of a gun..." McCree muttered, watching as the second dragon fizzled out of existence, a trail of corpses left in its wake.

Any plans to take the dragon alive were abandoned. A Heavy Assault raised his machine gun, and with one chomp of his maw, Hanzo destroyed the gun and the man's arms alike, with a spray of shrapnel and blood that splattered the grass. The man began to scream in hysterics, holding up his stumps, and the remaining Talon soldiers fled in all directions. McCree nearly forgot himself. He had to draw his eyes away from the gory spectacle to remind himself of his part in this. He began picking off the fleeing soldiers one-by-one, and their terror was such that they didn't even seem to hear his gunshots. Each fell, lifeless or close to it.

" _Jesse!_ " the dragon roared. He was heaving for breath, his mouth dripping saliva and blood onto the forest floor. His eyes were searching the windows for sign of McCree, rolling around like mad in their sockets.

McCree ran for the stairs and took them two at a time. Once he emerged outside, the dragon loped across the clearing towards him. "You did it, you crazy bastard!" McCree shouted at him, his face split in half with a massive grin, "You were magnificent out there, Hanzo!"

He flung himself at Hanzo's face, but Hanzo shook him off, his eyes cold and angry. "Are you injured?" the dragon asked.

"Not at all. But what about you?"

"Jesse," Hanzo said, ignoring his question, "We are leaving. Immediately. Talon will be back with reinforcements."

"Yeah, uh, right..." McCree had nearly forgotten they were in danger at all, "But are you sure you're okay? I think yer bleedin'..."

The dragon continued to ignore him. "Go and get my Storm Bow and whatever things you wish to take with us. We are leaving now."

" _Hanzo,_ " McCree snapped, refusing to be ignored again, "You are _bleeding._ "

"It is nothing. It is mostly not mine. We will both be much worse off if we do not leave."

"Sure, but where are we goin'?" 

"To that island, I suppose," Hanzo said, dismissively, "It doesn't matter. We just need to be away from here. Once we are safe, I hope you are prepared for how furious I shall be with you."

"Hanzo, I didn't -"

"Shut up. Shut your mouth _for once_ before you get us both killed."

Like a whipped dog, McCree slunk back into the old building, back to his camp, to try to consolidate the most important of their belongings into a single bag. Before turning off his phone, he sent a single text to Genji - _Emergency. No time to explain. We need to move forward with the plan ASAP. Heading there now._


	16. Prayers

By Hanzo's estimate, they would reach their destination in five or six hours, as long as the weather remained mild. McCree had not thought this sounded too bad - after all, the flight to Tokyo had taken thirteen hours - but he was proven so, so wrong. They stayed above the low rain clouds to avoid being seen by anyone on the ground, up where the wind beat upon them at hurricane speeds, so icy cold and strong it stole the breath from his lungs. He might have died, he guessed, if it was not for Hanzo's fur, which protected him from the worst of it. His arms were tired from clinging on, his thighs ached from riding, but he knew better than to speak up and complain about any of this. Hanzo was still furious with him. As miserable and tired and freezing as he was, he grit his teeth and burrowed in deeper to the dragon's mane for warmth. 

McCree was stuck with only his thoughts to entertain himself, and his thoughts, at the moment, were dark and unhappy. How had Talon found them? He felt so certain that he had not been followed that night, but something had led them to the right place. Now Talon would be even more determined to stop them, with so many of their number taken out. Was Yaeko safe? Had he been wrong to let her leave by herself? He cursed himself for not accompanying her to her hotel, but, then again, if he had been followed, then perhaps going with her could have put her in further danger.

Above all else, he worried about Hanzo. After grabbing Storm Bow's case and anything else of theirs that he could fit in his bag without weighing them down too much, he had come back outside to find Hanzo licking at his flank like a wounded dog. His scales were peeling away in terrible patches now, leaving raw and bloodied skin. McCree had chosen not to address it with Hanzo, because he knew that Hanzo was too proud to admit if he was hurt or frightened, but he could read both of those emotions in the dragon's red and yellow eyes. Things were coming to an end. For better or for worse, it would be over soon. McCree was not even certain that they could make it to Gibraltar in time. All that he could do was hope. 

Would Angela be able to take care of Hanzo?

He felt sure that his old Blackwatch partner Moira O'Deorain, had tricks up her sleeve that would have been able to keep Hanzo alive, but McCree would never crawl to her for help, not even at a time like this. He knew that she was the head of the Ministry of Genetics in the city of Oasis, Iraq, and he knew that she would have loved to see him begging her for help, but he had a sick feeling in his gut that she worked with Talon now. Moira was one hell of a healer, perhaps even better than Amari or Angela, but going to her was not worth the risk. Maybe... just maybe, if they got desperate enough...

No. Everything would be okay. They were flying to Gunkanjima now. They would get on the cargo ship and be in Gibraltar in, what? A couple of weeks? He didn't know anything about the speed of a cargo ship. If they went full speed, if they made no stops...

 _Hanzo will be dead before we get home_ , McCree thought, tightening his fists in Hanzo's scalp. Their rescue ship would become a funeral barge. 

_No matter what happens_ , he wanted to tell Hanzo, _you won't die alone_. It would be impossible for his voice to be heard over the sound of the wind, but he didn't really think he needed to say it aloud anyway. Hanzo knew that McCree was there for him. There was no doubt of that. 

He was drawn out of his thoughts by that weightless feeling of Hanzo's descent. He opened his eyes and looked over the dragon's side, that wild golden hair whipping him in the face. Grey clouds blocked out the morning sun, so that he could not tell what time it was or guess how long they'd been flying. Beneath them was a dense canopy of tree cover growing from craggy cliffs that stretched to the sea. Nestled in the cliffs was a scene from a postcard - a four-storied pagoda in that iconic vibrant red, built in front of a tall and narrow waterfall. A pale mist rose from the water, surrounding the structure and giving it an ethereal appearance. At this height, it looked as tiny and perfect as a dollhouse. On a sunny day, a place like that must be filled with tourists, but a fine rain had kept people away. 

McCree didn't know much about Gunkanjima, in fact he knew next to nothing about the island, but he knew this wasn't it. 

Hanzo flew over the pagoda, over the waterfall, and sunk into the expanse of forest beyond. McCree could tell they were approaching the ground too fast, but all he could do was hang on. 

When they hit, the impact shuddered the ground like an earthquake. Against his body, he could feel Hanzo heaving for breaths. McCree hopped down off him and rushed around to the dragon's face. Hanzo's mouth hung agape, saliva foaming at the corners of his lips as he struggled to fill his lungs. His gums and tongue, once a vibrant scarlet, had gone white. McCree wanted to comfort him, but he knew that Hanzo would not appreciate any tender words or pity. 

"Hanzo... are you okay?" McCree asked. Hanzo was not okay. He didn't need an answer, but it seemed the only decent thing to say. 

"We are almost there," Hanzo told him, "I just needed a break. I have never flown this far before." He seemed as determined not to address the progression of his curse as McCree was. 

"Hanzo..." McCree reached forward to put a hand on Hanzo's snout, but the dragon jerked away from his fingers and bared his teeth.

"I just need twenty or thirty minutes!" he snapped. 

"I can try to walk to the nearest town and get you food, or - " 

"No," Hanzo said, "By the time you walk there and come back, we could have already been to Gunkanjima." 

"But there won't be enough food there for you," McCree protested. 

"I will be _fine,_ " Hanzo snarled, "I can hunt on my own once we are there. I survived this long without you, didn't I?"

McCree supposed he couldn't really argue against that, so he kept his mouth shut. 

Hanzo, content with his silence, coiled up on himself, his weak muscles shivering. "You should go stretch your legs," he told McCree, "We will leave in twenty minutes. I just need twenty minutes." He sounded, in repeating that statement, almost like he was trying to convince himself of that truth. 

"I don't mind sittin' here with you."

"That is not necessary," Hanzo said, and he closed his eyes as a punctuation to that conversation. 

The last thing McCree wanted was to take his eyes off the dragon, but he could tell Hanzo wanted to collect himself in private. He was likely ashamed of his condition. For a torturous moment, McCree stood there and watched him continue to shudder for breaths, but doing nothing was just making him feel more anxious. He decided to listen to Hanzo and take a quick walk, just anything but stand there and watch his friend suffer. So he dropped their things off in the mossy forest floor, just beside Hanzo, and then he left. 

The forest seemed less wild and less overgrown than the one near Hanamura that they had been hiding out in. That was good, because he could find his way back to Hanzo more easily, but it also gave him less cover from the rain, and soon his clothes were drenched, and he trembled, cold to the bone. He had only circled the area for a couple of minutes before he stumbled upon the skinny, shallow river that ended with that waterfall. As he pissed in it, the idea to follow the river to the pagoda occurred to him. He wasn't sure why that pagoda called to him, maybe because it was an easy enough landmark to turn back at. Whatever the reason, once he zipped up his fly, he started downstream. By sticking close to the bank, he eventually discovered a walking path that led him downhill. 

The path did not lead him to the pagoda, however. Instead, it led to a clearing. The clearing was framed out by stone lanterns that had become overgrown with moss. At the center of the clearing was a stone torii gate and a stone shrine, protected by a pair of carved foxes. They were in poor condition, their faces chipped and weathered with age, the moss beginning to overtake them, too. It was not a forgotten place, though, despite its condition. Both fox statues wore bibs of crisp red cotton, that had clearly been replaced recently, and jars of sake and bags of rice had been left as an offering in the shrine. A small pond had been maintained on the grounds, its waters alive with the swimming bodies of fat, healthy koi fish. Someone still came here to worship and to care for the koi. The whole place felt haunted, but in a strange, backwards way, where it seemed that he was the ghost himself. 

The koi fish...

_The..._

_Koi..._

_Fish..._

" _Damn_ ," McCree muttered under his breath, and he jumped right into the knee-deep pond. 

McCree took off his serape. The koi began to panic, wiggling around his legs in a frenzy that churned the waters and threatened to trip him. He unfolded the piece of fabric, pinching the neck opening closed and tying it off with shaking fingers. He felt the fish sucking at his legs through his pants. He used his serape as a net, gathering as many of their writhing bodies as it would hold and dragging them out of the water. The thrashing fish were powerful. It took all of his strength to tie the other end of his serape together. He could feel their sharp fins sticking into the fabric, and soon his hands were cut and bleeding, but he ignored the pain. 

Leaving them flopping and fighting in the grass for the moment, McCree went to the offering box. He emptied his wallet of the last of the ten thousand yen notes that Yaeko had given him, wishing he had more to give. Then he turned to the fox statues. 

"It's me again," he said, and he gave a sad, pathetic chuckle, "I dunno if you're supposed to be the same ones, or if you're different ones, now that I think about it. Either way, I gotta ask you to give another message to the god of this shrine. Can you do that?"

He watched the stone foxes as if expecting an answer, but all he saw was the rain dripping down their unyielding bodies. 

"Please, if you're real, if you're there and can hear me in English, don't let Hanzo die. He don't deserve this. He never got his chance to live his life. And... I care about him. I haven't been able to care about anyone else or even myself since Reyes and Amari and Morrison and Liao and all the others died. All I want is for Hanzo to get his fair chance. That's all. And sorry for takin' a ton o' yer fish. I hope they weren't sacred or nothin'. Hanzo needs them."

He hoisted the makeshift sack over his shoulder, the fish twisting and beating against his back, and began the walk back.

By the time he had reached Hanzo, the movement had mostly stopped, but every muscle in his arms was in agony from carrying more than a hundred pounds of struggling koi fish uphill. It had been much longer than twenty minutes, perhaps closer to forty, and he found Hanzo awake and waiting for him. His breathing was back to normal, to McCree's immense relief. 

"Where were you?" Hanzo asked.

"I found you a snack," McCree said. He dropped his serape on the ground and wrestled with the knots. When he let the fish spill out, he saw a spark return to Hanzo's eyes. The fish stared up at man and beast with gaping, gasping mouths. The dragon bowed his head and ate them up off the forest floor, heedless of the grass and mud collected on their slimy bodies. McCree dropped to his knees, exhausted, but he was beaming as he watched Hanzo swallow every last fish. 

"Thank you," Hanzo said, and he leaned his head in against McCree, who kissed him right on the scaled nose. 

"We're gonna make it," McCree said.

"I will certainly try." 

* * *

Again, they were on their way. The cloud coverage was dense, so they were able to fly much lower, meaning the wind was less harsh. McCree might have thought that the shrine's deity had heard his prayers, if not for the fact that clumps of Hanzo's hairs were now coming out in his fists. Hanzo was getting worse. Every push of his muscles in flight created ripples of convulsions that McCree felt between his thighs. 

"We can always stop again if you need another break!" McCree shouted out to him.

If Hanzo had heard him at all, he did not respond. It was possible that the wind had carried McCree's words away from the dragon's ears. 

"Did you hear me, Hanzo?" he tried again, louder this time, "Don't push yourself so hard!" 

Hanzo answered, barely audible, "If I land again, I will not be getting back up."

It was as McCree had feared. He didn't bother fighting the grief; he allowed himself to weep into Hanzo's hair, because he was all out of options, and the tears were all he had left. The past couple of weeks had been astonishing. Here he was, mourning for Hanzo Shimada, the same man who had ruined Genji's life. He recalled how he had once thought Hanzo deserved every awful thing imaginable for what he had done to his brother. How wrong he had been! Good people made bad decisions sometimes, and bad people could change. He should have known this better than anyone. 

"When we get to Gibraltar, there's so many places I'm dyin' to take you," he yelled, "Like if we hop into Spain, they got one o' my favorite pizza chains. Not as good as the real stuff in Italy or even in New York, but real good!"

"I would like that," Hanzo said.

"They got sangria so cheap there. You'll get us a whole pitcher, and we'll have a good time!" McCree continued. 

He felt Hanzo laugh more than he could hear it, the rumble of a chuckle in the dragon's throat, " _I_ will get it? Why me?"

"Because you owe me for savin' you from that mine!" 

Beneath him, he felt more shudders of laughter. 

McCree drew the back of his arm across his face, trying to wipe away the steady flow of hot tears. "Y'know, if you go right to the top of our base on a clear day, you can look out 'n see Africa. You been to Africa?"

"Once," Hanzo said, "I have been to Numbani. I had a layover at the airport there, but I decided to change my flight and stay for several days."

"I been all over Africa. All over the world. Numbani's one of the best cities on the whole planet. We'll go on vacation there, when you get to feelin' better!"

"I would like that," Hanzo said again.

McCree swallowed back the urge to sob, although his heart ached in his chest, because it wanted to let one out so bad. He could feel it there like a physical lump inside of him. "You speak any other languages besides Japanese n' English?" he asked. 

"I took some French in school, and I'm decent at Mandarin."

"Well, they all speak English in Gibraltar. It's weird. I never spent much time at that base, but I remember bein' surprised. I guess I thought they'd all be speakin' Spanish."

"It is a British territory," Hanzo told him.

"I never much liked geography in school," McCree shouted back, "Or school period, for that matter."

Why were they talking about something so insignificant? So irrelevant? There was so much McCree wanted to tell him, but he couldn't stop all this damn crying. Maybe if they kept talking about themselves, about Gibraltar and their plans for the future, he could forget that the man he was with was dying.

"Speaking of which, I saw yer school uniform," he said, "Yaeko showed me pictures!"

"Jesse," Hanzo answered, his tone so gentle that it did not sound like his own voice, "I can't waste my energy talking, but I would appreciate it if you would tell me stories."

So McCree did. For every story that he knew of Hanzo's past, he told one of his own. He told Hanzo about how he had run around the American Southwest with the Deadlock Gang, which had started doing petty crimes and had worked up to international arms dealing and stealing from the military. "For all I knew, we mighta dealt with the Shimada Clan back then," he said. And he told Hanzo how Overwatch had busted them, and how Gabriel Reyes had given him the choice to join Overwatch or rot in prison. He told Hanzo how he had hated Reyes at first. He'd been like a stray dog backed into a corner, growling and snapping at everyone.

"But then, one day, I just realized I loved him," McCree admitted, "He was like a dad to me, in some ways. He and the rest o' the founding members of Overwatch were the only people who ever believed I had a lick o' good in me." It felt so good to be telling someone this. He had never talked so freely about them all before. 

He talked on about how they had all gathered together in the rec room every Saturday morning, whenever possible, to watch the new episodes of the Overwatch cartoon together, even though it was for kids; about the various times he had encouraged Echo to abuse her duplication ability and had been told off by Liao; about the year that Jack Morrison himself had taken the day off to take McCree golfing on his birthday, which he had been terrible at and had not enjoyed at all, but he had gone along with it out of respect for his Strike Commander; about their Halloween parties where every Overwatch member fought to have the most elaborate costume. As McCree continued with his flood of memories, he began to understand something: he wasn't apprehensive about going back to Overwatch. No, he wanted to be back on Overwatch with all of his heart. But he was scared shitless of facing those same old obstacles and burdens without the people from his past, the people he considered family. As long as he was on the run, it was easy to pretend he could just walk back into base and pick up the same conversation he'd had with Reyes and Adawe and all those other talented, brilliant people he had lost. Returning to this new, recalled Overwatch meant finally accepting the reality that his family was gone and his memories were all that he had. 

He had gone quiet, lost in his own thoughts, but Hanzo did not speak up to request more stories. 

They were descending, down through the clouds, and when they broke through, McCree saw it - Gunkanjima. It was smaller than he had imagined. It looked like someone had plucked up a few blocks out of a highly industrial city from one hundred years ago and had just plopped that plot of land in the middle of the sea. The ugly grey buildings loomed like ruins, covering the island from one end to the other. There, looking comically large at the island's side, was a cargo ship.

"It's them!" McCree yelled, "Hanzo! Land on the ship! We made it! You're almost there!"

Despite the bleakness of their situation, he was excited. It almost felt like Angela should be able to take one look at Hanzo and be able to give him a pill or injection to cure him. 

"You're gonna be able to rest and get all the food you want!" McCree shouted, "And you and Genji can make up with each other!"

"I would like that," Hanzo said, that same weary sentence he had kept repeating, and even the weakness in his voice was not enough to rob McCree of his hope.

But what did wipe the smile from McCree's face was when they were close enough to the ship to see the people on board. Especially one figure - a dark, large shape on the ship's deck, that sometimes glinted when it caught the sunlight. At first, he could not make out what that gleam on board was, but as they rushed nearer, he could tell it was a gauntlet. An over-sized, golden gauntlet. 

" _No!_ " McCree roared, "No! Hanzo! Pull up! Pull up! We need to get the hell outta here! It's Doomfist!"

Hanzo slowed, debating whether to flee or fight. Perhaps he could sink the boat and take them all out, but then McCree would be stranded here alone...

Before he could decide, the tiny figure of Doomfist below raised his gauntlet. Rows of snipers lifted their rifles. Even at this distance, dragon and rider could hear the blasts of countless gunfire. 

" _Move!_ " McCree bellowed, but before the end of his word had left his throat, the darts had already struck their massive target. 

Hanzo jerked beneath him with a screeching roar, a sound that was truly bestial, and, like thunder, it shook the whole sky. McCree locked his hands into Hanzo's mane and clung on.

A pair of airships rose off the cargo ship's deck. McCree was helpless to do anything but watch as they flew closer and closer. A net hung stretched between the two ships. They were trying to take Hanzo alive. He couldn't even reach for Peacekeeper, because the bag was on his back, and to grab for one meant loosening his grip on the dragon that now bucked and thrashed beneath him. 

As the ships neared, Hanzo lunged. He threw his body weight at one of the ships, which was thrown violently aside. The net between the two jerked taut, and the second ship was dragged down across the sky, spinning out of control. Before either ship could right themselves, Hanzo wrapped his body around the nose of one and began to constrict, clawing his long, taloned hands at the cockpit. Beast and vehicle plummeted from the sky, and McCree could do nothing but hold on and pray as the churning, frothy surface of the ocean came closer and closer.

Just before impact, Hanzo released the ship and was soaring again. Beneath them, the ship crashed into the waters, sending up a spray that reached for the clouds. The second ship released the net just in time to avoid the same fate, and Hanzo aimed for this remaining target, but after a halfhearted initial leap, his body decided to no longer listen to his commands. McCree felt Hanzo go lifeless beneath him. Together, they fell from the sky. 

The impact ripped the breath from his lungs. Hanzo's body had taken the worst of the fall, the sea swallowing up his tremendous form. McCree kicked away from his back to avoid being pulled deeper under with his weight. The icy water rushed into McCree's nose and mouth. He watched, helpless, as the light of the surface grew farther and farther away despite his frantic kicking. He was drowning, he realized. The bags on his back were just taking him down all the faster. He had maybe a handful of seconds of air left at best, and the world above was now a fifteen second swim away... twenty... twenty-five...

Some great weight pushed up against him, and the surface began to rush closer. As soon as he broke from the water, he gasped in huge mouthfuls of breath. Beside him, Hanzo's head burst up, and he gulped down air. He was wild-eyed, panicking like an animal. McCree grabbed onto a horn and Hanzo began to swim for the shore. The snipers on the cargo ship's deck were firing more darts, and the dragon's weakened scales were not enough to protect him. 

Above them, that second airship hovered into back into view. 

"No!" McCree howled.

There came an explosive sound of gunfire, and McCree watched a projectile scream through the air. It struck the ship, and for a second, just one tiny second, nothing happened. Then, there was a deafening _boom_ , and a wave of scorching-hot air engulfed him, singing his hair and burning his eyes. When he looked up, there was nothing but a fireball where the ship had once been, and the whole thing fell sizzling into the sea. The dragon gave one final push of his remaining energy to dodge the crash. Someone had shot the plane from the sky. Someone here was on their side! McCree tried to find their saviors, his eyes on Gunkanjima's docks, but he was too busy not drowning to see anyone or anything, since Hanzo was sinking lower and lower into the sea.

" _Hanzo!"_ McCree yelled, "No! _No!_ Please! No! I love you! _Please!_ Don't give up!" 

He heard the purr of running motors and looked up to find they were surrounded by incoming speed boats filled with Talon agents. He was afraid the nearest one would just plow them over, but it stopped quick right beside the incapacitated dragon, and a Talon trooper leaned over the edge, holding a rifle in his or her hands.

" _Please! Help him!"_ McCree sobbed up into that helmeted face, just before the soldier's rifle slammed butt-first into his temple. The world went dark, and his body slumped lifeless into the sea. 


	17. Heroes and Villains

McCree survived. He had not expected to, and it was hard to believe when he opened his eyes that his ghost still had a body to call home. 

At first, McCree was not able to make sense of his surroundings through the agony that gripped his nervous system. It was a pain so severe that it took him a couple of seconds of blinking helplessly up at the dark, stormy sky to figure out its source. His head. _Damn_ , his head. It hurt worse than when he had lost his arm, he thought, because when he had lost his arm, his body had gone into shock and the adrenaline had kept him focused. He could already feel a nasty knot forming on his brow from where he had been struck. He raised a hand to feel it, but he had a delayed realization that his hand had not actually moved at all. He felt out of control of his limbs. A fear churned in his gut, and the urge to vomit became uncontrollable. He managed to flip himself over face-down, onto his stomach, so that when the spray of bile and saltwater spilled from his throat, he didn't choke himself. It was only then, as he let his cheek come to rest in his own sick, that he realized his arms were bound at his sides. 

Where was he, tied up like this? And for that matter, where was Hanzo?

"Hanzo..." he moaned, and he lifted his head, which was somehow too heavy for his neck. In spite of the pulsing, sickening pain, he managed to look around.

They were on the cargo ship. Its deck was slick with seawater turning rust-colored from Hanzo's blood. McCree didn't know how Talon had managed to pull Hanzo up onto the ship, but somehow they had. He was belly-up like a dead snake. His scales were shedding by the hundreds now, from where the tranquilizer darts had pierced his hide. McCree could see them scattered all over the deck, like someone had tossed handfuls of giant, iridescent flower petals into the wind. Some of the talon soldiers around them, of which there were many, were busy crushing their scales under their heavy boots. There was a lively, celebratory atmosphere among Talon. They had accomplished what they had come for. Hanzo was captured, maybe even dying, and McCree could tell they were congratulating themselves for a job well done.

"Hanzo!" McCree repeated, a little stronger now, but his voice came out in a croak instead of the shout he had intended. Hanzo didn't react to his voice. In fact, McCree couldn't even tell if the dragon was breathing. He moaned in his agony, his eyes burning with tears that he was determined not to shed - _not now_ \- and he tried to wiggle closer to the dragon's gaping maw. 

"Oh, no, you don't." 

A shoe came down on his back, squeezing the breath from McCree's lungs.

McCree twisted his head to glare up. 

He had seen countless videos and photographs of the man called Doomfist. He had even seen him from afar, once or twice. His impression had always been that Doomfist was a hulking monster, but now, face-to-face, he was surprised. The smile Doomfist wore was charming, even handsome. He looked all man, no monster - albeit a man whose huge muscles were about to burst out of his well-tailored clothes. He carried the gauntlet on his arm like it was weightless, even though the gigantic thing must have weighed as much as a man, and that told McCree all he needed to know about the man's strength. 

"Where do you think you are going?" Doomfist asked. His Nigerian accent was thick, his tone sonorous. 

McCree drew his head back and spat up at Doomfist's chest. It was more blood than saliva, though. Was his mouth bleeding? His nose, maybe? He could certainly taste it, that familiar cloying tang. 

Doomfist glanced down at the watery red spatters across his shirt, then back to McCree. He looked more amused than disgusted or angry. "You know, I should really thank you for your invitation, McCree," he said.

"What?" 

"The invitation to come pick Hanzo up at Gunkanjima, of course," Doomfist explained. 

McCree narrowed his eyes up at the man. "I don't know what yer talkin' about..."

"Of course, you don't," Doomfist said with a chuckle. He flexed the fingers of his gauntlet, and McCree could imagine how easily his head could be crushed to gore in that metal fist. "We have been tracing all of your phone activity since the moment you contacted Sombra. You led us right here."

McCree wasn't surprised; he was _ashamed_. How could he have been so naive? He was almost glad that Hanzo was unconscious, so he didn't have to hear about how foolish McCree had been. "What do you want with him?" he asked.

"Hanzo Shimada has been on Talon's radar since he was young," Doomfist said, "Even more so now that he has become such a perfect weapon of chaos and destruction."

He approached Hanzo's head, resting his hand upon the dragon's neck. He gave Hanzo a pat, and the sight of the man touching Hanzo filled McCree with disgust. "He won't ever willingly work with you," he growled. 

Doomfist snickered. He left the dragon's side to return to McCree. There were flakes of scales sticking to his fingers, and he looked at the material in disgust before crouching beside McCree and wiping them off on McCree's shirt, "Well, fortunately, that changes nothing. Do you think all of my favorite pawns are here of their own free will?" 

"Hanzo won't be manipulated," McCree said.

"Perhaps not," Doomfist agreed, "But I believe that he can be brainwashed. When it comes to the art of neural conditioning, Talon has had many success stories."

 _"Bastard!"_ McCree hissed at him through clenched teeth, but there was nothing he could do beyond curse and glare. He looked around, his wide panicked eyes taking in as much of his surroundings as he could. Their bags, containing Storm Bow and Peacekeeper, had been pulled up on deck with him. He hoped the cases were well-built enough to keep both weapons dry. They were only a few meters away, resting against the railing, but with his arms restrained, it made little difference. They might as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. And the throbbing in his head was so severe, so breathtaking, that he didn't think he could aim worth a damn if a gunfight broke out, not even at close-range. He was likely no match for Doomfist even in his best condition. 

"It is over for you, McCree," Doomfist said, patting him on the cheek, "It is a shame. I might have wanted you for my collection, too, if I had not promised Reaper that he could deliver the killing blow."

Doomfist stood back up and kicked McCree in the ribs, flipping him over onto his side. McCree found himself face-to-boot with Reaper himself. His eyes moved up the body, all clad in black, until he was staring at the bone-white, skeletal mask. Why would Reaper want to kill McCree personally? It seemed McCree would die not knowing the answer, because Reaper was lowering one of his twin shotguns. The barrels kissed McCree's temple, and the pain from even that light touch was enough for McCree to see stars. He clenched his teeth in a grimace of anguish and tried to recoil from the gun, but there was really nowhere for him to go. 

"Yeah, go ahead and shoot a tied-up man like the coward you are," McCree snarled.

Reaper spoke up, his voice as haunting and hollow as the slamming of coffin lids, "You should have stayed out of this, kid." 

"And you should have taken off that Halloween mask and faced me like a man," McCree retorted, and he spat a second mouthful of spit and blood, this time up at Reaper's mask. The drips of red across the white was chilling. 

Doomfist smirked over Reaper's shoulder. "I think he has a point. Why don't you take off your mask, _Gabriel_?"

The name sliced through McCree's sense of reality like an ax through wood. He clenched his teeth, aware of the almost physical sensation of his heart breaking "No." It was all he could say. What was he saying _no_ to, though? No, that he didn't want to see what was underneath Reaper's mask? No, that he didn't believe Doomfist? Or maybe no, that his sanity couldn't take it - just let him live in blissful ignorance?

Reaper raised his left hand to his face, while his right hand kept the gun against McCree's temple.

"No!" McCree pleaded with him. He didn't want to know. Just keep the mask on! He thrashed against the ship's deck, wormlike, trying to pull his arms free from the ropes. 

The mask was lifted aside, and for that first second, he squeezed his eyes shut, like that might make it untrue. Maybe he would wake up and find this whole scenario to be a nightmare? He listened to the stomping feet of boots against the deck, and the lap of waves against the ship's sides, and the whisper of wind in his ears. He felt the sticky salt in his hair and clothes, the stabbing of anguish in his skull, and the burn of the ropes that bound him. No, this was not a nightmare. This was real. He had to face the horror in front of him. He wasn't even trying to hide the tears that began to well behind his eyelids. They slipped free and rolled hot down his cheeks, into his beard. He shook his head. No. No. No. No... 

"It's been a long time, Cowboy."

McCree peeled his eyes opened like it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. What he saw, when he opened them, was the corpse of Gabriel Reyes. Except it was a living corpse - moving, scowling, speaking - a zombie, something half-way between dead and alive. The necrotic flesh was colorless, lifeless, and cold. The features had all rotted away into something nearly unrecognizable. There was nothing left of the sharp-witted, dynamic man that McCree had worked alongside for more than a decade. In fact, if the horror had not recognized him, had not spoken to him that way, than McCree might have never believed it was Gabriel Reyes at all. 

McCree's face contorted into a rictus of torture, and he was certain he would throw up again, except his stomach was empty, so all it could do was churn in waves of overwhelming nausea. 

Behind Gabriel Reyes - now Reaper - Doomfist laughed and laughed and laughed. "It is like a family reunion, is it not?" he asked.

McCree ignored him, his attention focused on the carrion that took the shape of his former boss, his former mentor, the man he had almost considered a father. "I wasted years of my life mournin' your death!" he yelled, "I visited yer grave! I checked in on yer family! You _bastard_! I loved you!" 

Reaper flinched at those last three words, and, in doing so, he pulled the gun ever-so-slightly away from McCree's vulnerable head.

Two things happened at the exact same moment:

A distant gun fired. Reaper collapsed onto McCree, a black mist leaking from a new wound in his torso.

And from behind McCree, Hanzo lurched forward, quick as a snake's strike. He opened his jaw with a savage, screeching bellow and, in one snap of his fangs, bit off Doomfist's gauntlet. There was a terrific crunch of metal as his teeth pierced all the way through, and once it was severed, he gave a second chomp, crushing it to millions of useless pieces before spitting it out at the man beneath him. Doomfist gave a roar of anger and pain, a sound almost dragonlike in its intensity. Clutching his empty shoulder, wires dangling where his prosthetic and the gauntlet had once been, he began to stumble for the airship at the other end of the ship. Veins bulged across his broad forehead, his eyes searing with rage.

The Talon troops began to scramble for their weapons, but Doomfist barked at them, "Forget the dragon! They have reinforcements! Let's get out of here!"

Gunfire had broken out all around them, each burst of noise sending stabs of pain through McCree's skull. He rolled out from under Reaper, who had a dart in his chest and seemed to be either knocked out or paralyzed. For a moment he lay there in shock, staring at that pale and terrible face, but then Hanzo collapsed into a heap, his last burst of energy spent, and McCree knew he was running out of time. He tried to prop himself up on his restrained arms so that he could locate the "reinforcements" Doomfist had mentioned. He expected that Overwatch had arrived, and for a single heartbeat he carried hope that he might see Genji scaling over the ship's railing or Winston barreling down the length of the deck. But there were no familiar faces here. His saviors, two figures sprinting across the elevated bridge, were not Overwatch. One of them was broad-shouldered and wearing a helmet over his face. The gun he carried was huge, more than half the size of the man himself, and he was taking out groups of Talon soldiers by firing small rockets which exploded on impact, tearing through many enemies in a single blow. The second figure was smaller, running crouched and graceful, with a sniper rifle raised to eye-level. This stranger was masked, too, although hers was distinctly the shape of a black cat's head, trimmed with brilliant gold. For one wonderful, breathtaking second, McCree thought it was Ana Amari herself, wearing the mask of one of her Egyptian Gods. The gun this figure carried was nearly identical to Amari's; he would recognize it anywhere, even at this distance. But then he reminded himself - no, Amari is dead - and his excitement was forgotten. 

McCree turned his attention back to Hanzo, but between him and the dragon stood none other than Sombra herself. She hadn't been there one blink of his eyes, but she was the next. He clenched his fists and would have lunged for his throat, but the pain from his injury and from the heartache had him nearly paralyzed.

"For what it's worth, Gabe has always been fond of you, too," she said.

" _Fuck you_ ," he muttered, staring at her with such disgust. She was a scum of a person. Why had he trusted her? A few drunken moments of camaraderie in Mexico did not make them friends. He should have known better. 

"And I never told them about Yaeko or Ryuuza Ryokan," she added, "I know you have no reason to believe me, but as far as Talon is concerned, she is not involved in all of this."

"Why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything?" he growled, "Look at what you've done to him." His eyes rolled, indicating Hanzo, who was motionless behind her.

"A man like Hanzo could not have stayed uninvolved in this forever," she said.

Before McCree could spit back a retort, she had found a knife tucked away somewhere on Reaper's body, and she sliced McCree's bindings off with one flick of the blade. Then she grabbed Reaper under an arm and hoisted him to his feet. His limbs groggy and clumsy from whatever drug had incapacitated him, Reaper gave McCree one last long, hard look before pulling his mask back into place. Sombra blew McCree a kiss with her free hand, and the pair faded into invisibility right before McCree's eyes, like magic. 

McCree wanted to lay there and wallow in his trauma, so sick from it that he could barely think or move, but then he heard his own name, barely audible over the violent battle going on at all sides. "Jesse..."

McCree scrambled for Hanzo, and as he rose, pain exploded up his side as a bullet grazed his torso, tearing a stripe of flesh out with it. He sobbed. The new agony, combined with the piercing throb in his skull, stole the strength from his limbs and he stumbled to his knees. He managed to crawl the remaining few feet to Hanzo's side before he couldn't move any further, and his body sagged against Hanzo's head. Great streams of blood were flowing from Hanzo's panting mouth, and now McCree's side was seeping blood into the mix, too, coating the deck in crimson. Hanzo's closest eye rolled up to gaze into McCree's face.

"Were you shot?" the dragon asked.

"No," McCree lied, even as his blood spilled across Hanzo's hair and scales, "No, I'm fine. Just a bump to the head. I'll be right as rain after some aspirin. What about you, big guy?"

They were interrupted by the roar of engines coming to life, as the airship at the end of the ship's deck lifted into the sky. McCree took a sick, delirious sense of satisfaction in the fact that Doomfist was stuck with his man-made transportation. He would never know what he felt like to take off on dragon back and soar among the clouds. He didn't deserve that pleasure. It was an experience for McCree to treasure, and McCree alone.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," McCree said.

"At least you made me feel that I was worth saving," Hanzo sighed, his voice ragged, and he nuzzled up into McCree's weight before his lids fluttered closed. 

Beneath him, Hanzo's body began to glow that same electric blue that McCree had seen before. He pulled away from it, the brilliance hurting his vision, and he thought - _this is it_. This is how his and Hanzo's story ends. Because as the dragon's body gave one final, shuddering breath, McCree saw the spirits of Ana Amari and Jack Morrison approaching him, welcoming him into the afterlife. 


	18. Heroes Never Die

McCree's senses returned to him a little at a time. The chill of cool air conditioning on his skin. The sound of footsteps on a nearby tiled floor. The beeping and whirring of machinery. The shifting of muted lights behind his closed eyelids. 

Where was he? Was this the afterlife? Bracing himself for the worst - although what could be worse than death? - McCree opened his eyes.

The glare of harsh fluorescent lights off stainless steel cabinets made him wince, and he squeezed them shut again. 

"Jesse?" came a soft voice.

Son of a gun. He'd recognize that voice anywhere. He felt a pang of warmth in his heart. "Angela?"

When he made a second attempt to take in his surroundings, he saw he was in some kind of hospital room. Maybe a medical bay? He wasn't sure. He was laid out in a bed wearing a starchy blue gown and stuck with an IV in his right forearm. Rushing to his side was Dr. Angela Ziegler. She looked like she had not aged a day since he last saw her; she was still bright-eyed with flawless skin and built like an angel. The sight of her still looking so youthful and lovely made McCree feel about a thousand years old. He smiled and tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in his side stole his breath. He fell back onto the pillows, and all that he could do was lamely reach for her. She grabbed his hand in both of hers and brought it to her chest. "How are you feeling?" she asked, "Are you in pain? I can increase your dose of medication."

Dozens of questions were racing through his mind, questions along the lines of - Where was he? How had he gotten here? What was she doing here? But the question that came out was, "Where's Hanzo?" That was the question he needed the answer to most urgently. 

Her lips pursed in a frown. "Jesse McCree, this is the first time you have seen me in years, and _that_ is all that you can say?" 

"Angela, is he dead?" he asked, impatient, "You know I'm glad to see you. You know I wanna catch up. But I need to know... how is Hanzo? Where is he?"

"You truly don't remember?" 

"Remember what?" he said, and he tried to sit upright again, this time a little slower and with a little more care. He could feel the pull of stitches from where he'd been shot.

Angela reached behind him to prop up his pillows. He leaned back into them, trying to conceal his grimace of pain. "You suffered a traumatic brain injury. I induced a coma so that we could transport you back to Gibraltar safely and monitor your brain swelling. You should be fine, by the way. _You're welcome._ Yesterday, I woke you up from the coma, and you were behaving like a fool."

McCree wanted to grab her by the lapels of her lab coat and shake her. She still had not answered his question about Hanzo, and with each word, he grew more and more anxious. "I'm sorry, Ang. I hate to interrupt you, but I really want to know about Hanzo."

"I'm trying to tell you, Jesse," she sighed, rolling her eyes, "It's common to be confused and disoriented when waking from a coma, some patients even experience hallucinations, so you should not feel too embarrassed. You thought that Hanzo was your high school sweetheart and that you had been abducted by aliens for the past fifteen years."

_"What?_ " He didn't even have the slightest memory of that. In fact, he was shocked to be told that he had woken up at all. His last memory was Hanzo bleeding everywhere, his scales glowing neon, the smell of gunfire...

Angela laughed. "You tried to convince me that you could speak Japanese, and you shouted at Hanzo and Genji in gibberish as though they could understand you. Genji was laughing so hard he was in tears."

"So Hanzo is alive?" McCree pressed her.

"He is alive," she said, and she shook her head, grinning from ear to ear, "You tried to remove your entire arm and propose to him with it. I had to sedate you. So I told Hanzo that it might be wise for him to leave until you had regained your senses."

"He was _here_?" McCree asked, and he took a second to study his surroundings again. He recognized this place, now that he was looking at it properly. This was a room in the Watchpoint at Gibraltar. Angela's main laboratory had been destroyed with the Overwatch headquarters, but she had apparently set up a new base for herself here using one of the old, unused laboratories. "He fit in this room? So he's no longer a dragon? He is a man?"

"Jesse, Hanzo has been a man since we picked the two of you up in Japan five days ago."

McCree felt a slow, easy smile creep across his face. He stared up at Angela like she was the best thing he'd ever seen in his life, his eyes full of raw emotion. Hanzo was alive, and he was a man again. If she hadn't been standing right there grinning down at him that way, he might have let himself cry. He _had_ to see Hanzo. He was dying to look him in the eyes, in his _real_ eyes. He wanted to touch him. Smell him. Hear the voice from his human throat. Would Hanzo be taller than him? Shorter than him? How would he carry himself? What was the length of his strides? The most recent photograph he had seen of the man had been from years ago - would he still have the same goatee? Would his hair be longer or shorter? How would he dress? Most importantly - how would he react to seeing McCree again?

But as soon as he got to feeling celebratory, as soon as relief washed over him, something wiped away his smile. "Reyes is-"

"I know," Angela interrupted him, and she set one hand on his cheek, "Jack and Ana explained everything to me. I'm so sorry, Jesse. I can't imagine how you must be feeling right now. None of us could believe it."

"Jack and Ana..." McCree repeated, and he got hit in the gut with a wave of nausea. He gave a miserable moan and flung her touch away from him, covering his mouth with a hand. 

"Are you going to be sick?" 

He shook his head. For a few seconds, he just took heavy breaths until the urge to vomit had passed, and then he dropped back into his pillows with a wretched expression upon his face. "I saw them come to me when I got shot. I thought they were ghosts. It was them? They're alive?"

"It was Ana who was able to stabilize you until we arrived," she explained, "We were all shocked, to say the very least. Some of us are taking it better than others. Winston actually left. I think he came up with some mission to go on just to get himself out of here. He took Mei and Echo along with him and just stormed out." Her hand returned to his cheek, and he tolerated it even though he wanted to shove her aside. He knew that she was trying to comfort him, but he didn't want to be touched. In fact, he wanted to run out of here and throw himself off the cliffs - just let the sea finish the job it started. He could still remember the terror of thinking he would drown. That was preferable to this feeling in his chest right now.

"I don't blame the big guy," McCree grumbled, "Did they have some explanation for themselves? I think they owe all of us a big damn apology."

"They do," Angela agreed. 

"Where are they?"

"Here, somewhere. In their rooms, I would guess," she said, "You know, Ana took turns with Hanzo at your bedside. Both her and Jack seem genuinely sorry, and they believe they made the best decision in the circumstances."

"I don't care. I don't need the excuses," McCree grumbled, "I mourned them for years. They're dead to me."

"Jesse, I think that you should hear what they have to say before you say such things."

"Ain't you mad, too?" he growled at her.

"Of course I am, Jesse. You aren't the only one who loved them," Angela snapped at him, "And poor Fareeha. I've called her a dozen times. She's so angry she won't even speak about it. But we're all together now, Jesse. We will get through this, somehow. With or without Jack and Ana."

McCree looked away from her, staring into the empty corner of the room. He was so tense, so upset, that he couldn't even think of what to say or do next. There was only one thing, he realized, that could distract him from these horrible feelings. "I just wanna see Hanzo," he said.

"Of course. I will go get him," Angela sighed, "but I still believe that you should hear her out. You'll never be able to heal as long as you stay furious with her, and I'm not talking about your physical wounds."

She rose off the bed and turned to leave, but McCree caught her wrist to stop her. She looked back at him, and he could see the heartbreak in her eyes. Jack's and Ana's sudden appearances back in the world of the living, as well as the revelation about Reaper, were having a terrible impact on the whole team. It was selfish of him to think that his pain was somehow worse than hers. He opened his arms for her, and she fell upon him, clinging to his shoulders. He kissed her platinum hair, and she laughed into his neck, and he could feel her tears soaking through his hospital gown.

"I missed you, Angie," he said.

* * *

Hanzo Shimada, the man, in the flesh, stepped into the room half of an hour later, and he stole McCree's breath away. 

He was more perfect than McCree had imagined. The face was the same as the pictures - handsome, severe features, sharp angles. He had the same neat goatee as his most recent photograph, but his hair was a little longer, although not as long as he had once worn it in his youth. He kept it all pulled back in a golden ribbon, and it was sleek and black as oil. There was a little bit of graying, right at the temples, which made McCree smile, as did those frown lines - because who else but Hanzo would have frown lines so deep? His eyes - McCree was ecstatic to finally see what his eyes truly looked like! - dark, clever, piercing. And the dragon tattoo! McCree couldn't decide what to focus on. His gaze kept jumping from feature to feature, drinking it all in. He was sure that he had an idiotic grin on his face, but he just couldn't contain himself. This was the moment he'd been waiting weeks for. 

He reached out his arms to him. "Hanzo Shimada, you beautiful bastard."

Hanzo crossed the room, and McCree noticed with glee that he was taller than Hanzo, and that Hanzo was thinner, fitter, with more defined muscles. He carried himself proudly with his back straight and chin held high. He did not step into McCree's waiting arms, however. Instead, he sat down at the edge of the bed. For several seconds, all that either man could do was stare at each other. 

"You're stunnin', Hanzo. More perfect than I coulda imagined. I can't stop starin' at you."

Hanzo's face softened at that, and he tore his gaze away. "Jesse," he said, "I cannot thank you enough."

"No," McCree stopped him, "Don't start with that. I don't need your thanks."

"But I owe you my life."

"You bit off Doomfist's arm, so I'd say we're even."

Hanzo exhaled through his nose, something between a laugh and a scoff, "He will make another one. It was already a prosthetic. He has lost nothing. This will just be a minor inconvenience."

"Let's not talk about that," McCree said, because Hanzo was right, and he did not have the energy right now to think about how vindictive Doomfist would be once he had a new arm, "Were you hurt? You was lookin' pretty bad back there."

Hanzo smiled, actually smiled, and it was a sight so wonderful that McCree knew he was head over _fuckin'_ heels in love with the jerk. "When I changed back, I was fine. It seems all the injuries were specific to my dragon body. What about you, though, Jesse? How do you feel?" 

"Angela's the best doc I've ever known," McCree assured him, "She says I'll be fine. I just gotta take it easy for a while."

"Yes. You deserve to rest," Hanzo said.

McCree reached to touch his face, but Hanzo dodged the touch. His smile swept away into something uncomfortable, pained. McCree longed for it to return. "Is everything okay?" he asked, frowning. 

"I just hope that you do not expect things to immediately be the same as they were before."

"Uh, whadya mean?"

Hanzo looked pensive and unhappy as he made eye contact again. McCree felt himself being pulled into those incredible eyes. "I mean that this is _my_ body. My real one. I won't stand to be pet like a dog."

"You said that to me once before," McCree pointed out.

"That body never felt like my own. I gave it to you more freely," Hanzo explained, "Please. Respect my boundaries. It will take me time. We haven't known each other very long."

"No," McCree admitted, "We haven't. I ain't gonna lie, though, Hanzo - I'm disappointed. But I'll give you all the time you need."

At this, Hanzo scooted closer. He opened a hand, and McCree took it. Their palms were warm together. His were clammy and Hanzo's were dry. Both men had callused fingers. It was a small thing, this least intimate of touches, but it was better than nothing, and so McCree took comfort in it. "Dr. Ziegler told me that some memory loss could occur after a traumatic brain injury; sometimes days or whole weeks of memories could be gone," his grip on McCree's fingers became tighter, a grief as cold as ice in his eyes, "I was afraid that you would forget me."

McCree cracked a grin and gave Hanzo's hand a quick double squeeze, "Forget _you_? No, never."

A flicker of that smile returned to Hanzo's mouth again. 

It occurred to McCree that, if he had experienced memory loss, he might have forgotten his run-in with Reaper. He almost wished he could let go of that memory forever, but he also didn't want to lose even a second of the time he'd shared with Hanzo. He would rather have it this way. The only thing he did struggle with seemed to be any recollection of waking from his coma. McCree brought it up, deciding it was better to get the shame off his chest, "Angela said you n Genji were in here yesterday?" 

Hanzo snickered. "Did she also tell you what you did when you woke up?"

"Yeah, yeah," McCree groaned, "She also told me that it's _normal._ Yer gonna laugh at a man in a hospital bed?"

"There is nothing normal about you, Jesse McCree," Hanzo said, smirking, "You asked me to marry you, you know."

McCree beamed up at him, "You said 'yes' of course, right?" 

Hanzo pulled his hand from McCree's, and McCree braced himself for the walls to go back up, for the man to clam shut. Instead, Hanzo rolled his eyes. "No one in their right mind would say 'yes' after the scene you caused."

A comfortable silence fell over the two as McCree just stared at him. It was amazing to see that mouth moving and those words coming out. It was Hanzo. Hanzo! He was finally himself again. McCree could have sat there and studied his features for hours. Or for the rest of his life, even. He ached to run his hands through the man's hair, to trace the ink of his tattoo up his arm, and more - to press his mouth to the dip of the man's clavicle, to undress him layer by layer, to kiss the ridges of his spine. He swallowed, his train of thought suddenly moving into uncomfortable territory, and he said, "Well, how's it goin with Genji? Are you n him getting along? Have you spoken to him?"

Hanzo sighed, "Things are improving. It will take time. We love each other. We will get through this."

"I'm real glad, Hanzo."

"As am I," Hanzo agreed. 

"So you think you're gonna stay?" McCree asked.

"Jesse..."

"If you need more time to think about it, that's okay."

"No," Hanzo said, "I have already made up my mind, but I fear you won't like my answer."

"So... you're leaving?"

"For now. You need time to recover, and I need time to collect myself. It has been an unusual summer for me. But I am not _averse_ to returning, one day, if you can be patient for me. This is just a lot for me at once. Please, don't take it personally."

"I feel like I just got you, and now I'm losin' you," McCree muttered.

"I am not running away from you. You must know better than that. This will not be the last time we see each other."

The room became quiet again. They listened to the soft hum of air conditioning, to the sound of each other's breaths, to the rustle of the bedsheets as McCree fidgeted. He was just about to open his mouth to speak when Hanzo asked, "Have you spoken to Yaeko?"

"No. Have you?"

Hanzo inhaled through his nose and let it out through his mouth. McCree could see that his friend was struggling with something, and he felt a chill of fear. "Is she okay? She ain't hurt or in trouble, is she?" Sombra had promised that she hadn't involved Yaeko in this, but he knew better than to trust Sombra anymore.

"No!" Hanzo said, "No. She is fine. She just had some unusual information for me. I suppose that there is no point in keeping this from you, because she will tell you herself. Apparently she found a scroll in the family's collection, one which everyone had always assumed to be poetry, but she now believes was written about the curse." 

"What did it say?"

Hanzo recited it, translating the words Yaeko had spoken to him into English, " _Untangle the red thread, and t_ _he dragon's curse comes undone."_

"I don't get it," McCree admitted.

Hanzo flipped over McCree's hand, so that it was palm-down on the bed. He extended his index finger and gently traced a long line down McCree's arm, hopping over the tape that held the IV in place under his skin, and ending at the tip of his pinky finger. The caress was so soft and intimate that it sent a shudder through McCree's whole nervous system. "According to Japanese legend, an invisible red thread ties together two people who are destined to meet. This red thread extends from their hearts, through their fingers, and binds their souls together."

"Like soulmates?"

Hanzo nodded. "Essentially, Yaeko believes that the curse was broken because we are soulmates."

McCree felt his cheeks warm up, and he hoped he wasn't visibly blushing. "Hell," he muttered, "That sounds nice, but I don't know if I believe in stuff like that at all."

Hanzo looked relieved, his mouth shifting into an awkward smile. "Nor do I."

"I _do_ believe that I love you," McCree said, "I know it's movin' too fast, I know I'm probably scarin' you away, but I feel this way, and I can't change that."

Hanzo reached for McCree's face, sweeping his hair from his brow. "It is okay, Jesse. I love you too." 

He leaned over McCree and gave him a dry, chaste kiss on the forehead. McCree lifted his hands to cup Hanzo's cheeks, but Hanzo was already withdrawing, uninterested in moving things any further than that. 

"Well," McCree sighed, feeling defeated, and his arms dropped back at his sides, "I ain't gonna go back on my word. I hate you a little bit for leavin', but I won't make you stay. A promise is a promise. After all, you can't tame a dragon."

He flashed Hanzo a cheeky smile, but Hanzo's expression remained fierce and serious. "No, Jesse, you are wrong. _You already have_."


	19. Recovery

Hanzo wasted no time; he was gone when McCree woke up the next morning. Without Hanzo around to distract him, the misery that had been gnawing at McCree's thoughts was able to devour his brain completely. He could not stop thinking about Reyes's corpse-like face, or the way that the man had so coldly put his gun to McCree's temple. _How could you do that to me?_ he wanted to ask him, _After all we've been through together?_ Of course, there was no way to ask Reyes these questions, and even if he had the means to do so, there was no point - Reyes had made his choices. They were no longer fighting on the same side. Any affection McCree once had for the man was gone, and it left a terrible void inside of him.

Still, McCree could not help but cling to small hopes. Doomfist had said that he had the ability to force people to do his bidding, so perhaps Reyes was simply brainwashed? McCree decided that was more than he could hope for. If he kept up that train of thought, he would only end up heartbroken. Reyes was not a man easily broken by manipulation or coercion. 

"Please try to stop thinking about him for now," Angela begged him. She claimed that it would hinder his recovery, but it wasn't like he could just flip a switch and turn those thoughts off. According to her rules, he couldn't read a book, watch television, smoke, drink any alcohol, consume any caffeine, do any strenuous physical activity - and now he was being told that he couldn't think, either, because when he was left alone to his thoughts, they _always_ turned to Reyes. When he told her this, she decided to finally let the others come in and visit him. 

That afternoon, he was sitting up in bed and working on a puzzle that Angela had brought him, when Genji came in. Angela thought that Genji would be the calmest and easiest visitor to start with, but McCree privately dreaded the conversation about Hanzo that was bound to happen. Genji was carrying a tray with lunch - a bowl of rice filled with salmon, edamame, and avocado. Genji announced, with tremendous pride, that he had made it all for McCree himself, which McCree knew was nothing to scoff at, because the kitchens on this Watchpoint were nothing compared to the impressive kitchens of their former base in Switzerland. This was the exact kind of meal he didn't want after so long in Japan, but he was glad to see Genji, so he decided he'd try to eat it anyway.

"My brother asked me to give this to you," Genji said.

McCree pushed away the table on his lap where the puzzle pieces were laid out, replacing it with the tray of food, and he thought, _here we go._ Genji fished something out of the front pocket of his hoodie and set it on the corner of the tray. McCree picked the object up to study it. It was an origami dragon, folded from a sheet of white printer paper. McCree smiled, turning it this way and that in his fingers to study the neat folds. _That sentimental bastard,_ he thought to himself, and he felt the urge to be alone with it so he could weep. Why had Hanzo left him? He needed Hanzo more than ever right now. 

Genji saw the flood of emotion across his friend's face, and he sighed. "I never imagined that the two of you would end up so close."

McCree didn't know what to say to that. He had not imagined that outcome either, but if Reyes was the last thing that McCree wanted to discuss, then Hanzo was the second-to-last for certain. He did not know the right words in any language to describe how only a handful of days in Hanzo's company had been enough to fall so deeply in love. Maybe they were soulmates after all. He missed Hanzo so fiercely that the sorrow and longing felt like a tumor growing in his chest, solid and consuming and poisonous. 

"How do you feel?" Genji asked, and McCree was so relieved for the change of subject. 

"Tired. Sore all over," he muttered, "Ang tells me that once I start moving around again, my side'll hurt worse than anything, so I guess I got that to look forward to."

"Yaeko has been calling me every few hours for updates," Genji laughed, "The woman is driving me crazy. You should give her a call."

"Yeah. Maybe when I feel more like myself."

"Do you want to talk about what happened?"

"No."

For a few pregnant seconds, the two men stared at each other, and McCree wondered if Genji was about to give him some bullshit Shambali wisdom, but then Genji sat at the foot of the bed and began filling in holes of McCree's puzzle, and McCree stabbed his chopsticks in for his first mouthful of rice, and they passed the afternoon in comfortable, quiet companionship. 

* * *

When McCree woke in the evening, as Angela was bringing him his next dose of medication, she told him that the others were growing more and more impatient to see him, and he let her know that she could invite them in. Angela could plainly see that he was allowing this only reluctantly, and she tried to talk him out of it, but he knew if he didn't have some kind of distraction that he would just get lost in his negative thoughts. "Just not Ana or Jack," he told her, because he wasn't quite ready for that.

To which she replied, "No. Of course not. Athena?"

The artificial intelligence system blinked on in the room, and Athena's pleasant voice rang out, "Yes, Dr. Ziegler, I heard everything. I will let the other agents know."

McCree smiled, "It's good t' hear yer voice, Athena."

"Yours too, Agent McCree."

It was only perhaps a minute later when Reinhardt burst into the room, as if he'd been waiting all night for the call. He looked like he was about to leap onto McCree's bed and smother him in a hug, but Brigitte dove into his path and stopped him, scolding him with a wagging finger. McCree felt a rush of warmth at the sight of the two of them. Reinhardt's age was finally catching up to him. He looked impossibly old, with more wrinkles on his face than McCree remembered, and a much longer beard. He was just as boisterous as ever, though. McCree opened his arms to receive a hug that nearly split his stitches open and crushed the life out of him. He wheezed until Reinhardt let go.

"Reinhardt, what did I tell you?" Angela chided him.

His eyes went wide and hurt, like a kicked puppy's. "You said I could not hug him," he said.

"And what did you just do?"

"I hugged him..."

"That's not fair," Brigitte whined, "I wanted a hug, too!"

"I can't even believe how big you got," McCree said, reaching for her. Thankfully, her embrace was much gentler. She was as tall, maybe even taller than he was! It was incredible. The last time he'd seen her, she'd been a teenager.

They were interrupted by Lena popping in, literally. She was holding a stack of board games, which she dropped on the floor to dive into McCree's bed and squeeze him. Angela began yelling, threatening to kick them all out, and the chaos that followed made McCree finally feel at home. _I really am back,_ he thought, _and so are they. This is really happening._

Lena sat at the foot of McCree's bed, cross-legged, and the others pulled up chairs. The five of them spent hours there playing board games. Cluedo first - McCree won; Professor Plum in the conservatory with the rope. Then they played Monopoly - which Lena won - and Scrabble - another win for Lena. All of the laughter and shouting drew a curious Genji in, and he joined them for a game of Concept, which the team of Angela, McCree, and Genji won after Reinhardt nearly flipped the whole bed over half a dozen times in his enthusiasm. 

At that point, it was growing late, and McCree's energy was drained. Angela could read the weariness plainly on her patient's face and called it a night.

As Angela shooed them all out, announcing that McCree had more than enough excitement for one evening, McCree thought that this had been one of his best days he could remember. He had missed these people more than he had realized. He was in a good mood, truly relaxed and content for the first time since waking up here, and it took him off guard when Angela said, once they were alone, "Ana really wants to come see you, Jesse. I'm not saying that you need to forgive her, but you should not avoid her like this either until you have heard her side of the story first." 

His mood deflated in the blink of an eye. He stared at her, wondering if she knew how much he hated her in that moment for ruining his night, when he realized that he was being unfair. It was childish to avoid Amari outright like this, plain and simple. He looked away, focusing on the wrinkled spot at the foot of the bed where Lena had sat moments ago. "Okay. Bring her in." 

* * *

Had her hair been so white the last time he had seen her? Had she always had those crow's feet around her eyes, and the winkles framing her mouth? It was hard to look at Ana Amari, because with the signs of her aging and her missing right eye, she no longer resembled the dark-haired, shrewd woman of his memories - the woman who had taught him to shoot, who had made him Egyptian desserts, who had been like a mother to the whole team. He wanted to hate her. He was so _damn_ mad. But the sight of her reminded him that he had lost Liao and Adawe and so many others, and now he had lost Reyes twice, and he was _so fucking sad_ that he couldn't hold it in anymore. 

McCree buried his face in his arm and wept. 

She took one of the chairs that had been pulled up at his bedside and dragged it closer. When she sat down and watched him cry, looking concerned and ashamed, he realized she looked so fragile. He had built her up into something beyond human in his head, but that was not how she really was, and it likely was not really how she had ever been. He couldn't just sit there and cry in front of her when she looked so close to tears herself. He dried his tears on the back of his wrist and leaned in to embrace her. When she held him, rubbing his back in slow, comforting circles, he understood that underneath everything, despite how his memories had blown everything about Ana Amari out of proportion, this part of her - the heart - was still real and true. 

"I can only imagine how angry you must be, but let me - "

"Stop," McCree interrupted her, pulling out of her arms, "Not right now. I ain't angry. I'm tired of bein' angry. Can we just... talk about somethin' else?"

They ended up picking Scrabble out of the stack of board games. McCree knew that they'd need to talk about things eventually, but he just didn't have it in him. He wanted things to feel normal with her for this one single moment. He wanted to feel like Reyes hadn't betrayed them, like Reyes hadn't held a gun to his head, like the date was ten years earlier and Overwatch was still around, and none of the traumatic shit from the past few years had happened to any of them. He wanted to pretend that somewhere out there, across the ocean, was a man named Hanzo who hadn't tried to kill his brother and had yet to seal his heart away behind walls of grief and self-hatred. He wanted to pretend that Liao was across the base doing tests on Echo, and that Jack Morrison action figures were still on the shelves in stores. So he set down D A S H, and she placed B A R G A I N, and on his turn he played J O G, and she asked him about Hanzo, and he found that she was the one person he felt comfortable telling the whole story to. So he did, from beginning to end. He told her about the Deadlock Gang trying to steal Echo, and about Genji catching him at the motel, and about foolishly trusting Sombra, and about Yaeko who believed he and Hanzo were soulmates, and about the afternoon in the rainy field of sunflowers... By the end of his story, she won with 337 points to his 278, but he had never been happier losing a game in his life. 

"Would you like to play another round?" she offered, and he helped her scoop all the letters back into the velvet bag.

* * *

"Wake up, Jesse," a voice was saying, "there's breakfast."

McCree didn't remember falling asleep. It must have been in the middle of one of the Scrabble games - he and Amari had ended up playing into the early hours of the morning. He wanted to roll back over into the pillows and return to his dreamless slumber, but Echo was at his side shaking him so fiercely he thought he would fall off the bed. 

"You don't even eat breakfast anyway," he muttered, trying to pull the blankets back up over himself. 

"Exactly," she said, "So I am not hungry and will have no need to leave you alone until you finally wake up."

Five minutes later, he shuffled into the kitchen wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt of Genji's. The sight that greeted him made him feel like he was being thrown back into the past. Morrison was at the stove, wearing an obnoxious apron and flipping a pan of flapjacks over the burner. The table was piled with fruits and syrup and whipped topping, and around the table sat _everyone._ Winston was slicing bananas over his plate, looking even more huge than McCree had remembered him, and, at his side, Mei was filling the others in on what had been discussed with the United Nations while they had been away. Brigitte had a stack of flapjacks about a foot high all to herself, which she was drenching in maple syrup. Genji was chatting with Angela as she stood by the sink juicing oranges.

Lena noticed him first and shouted, mouth full of food, "Jesse! Come here, let me introduce you to Mei!"

As McCree took a step into the room, Reinhardt swept forward, blocking his path. He was wearing an apron that matched Morrison's and held out a plate filled with fresh, hot sausages. "Here! Some protein will do you good!"

McCree had the urge to knock the plate out of his hands and throw himself into another one of Reinhardt's violent hugs. He had missed moments like this so much. It felt almost like old times. Close his eyes and he could imagine that Reyes was there at Morrison's side frying up eggs for his famous breakfast quesadillas, and that Liao was standing at the counter spreading jam on her toast while she steeped her tea. 

He tried to place Hanzo somewhere in this domestic scene. He regretted that he had never bothered to ask Hanzo the simple things, like what his favorite breakfast food was or how he took his eggs. Perhaps he would be at the table already, looking a little overwhelmed and a little uncomfortable, but he would be saving the seat at his side for McCree. 

* * *

After breakfast, his heart still full of joy and his stomach still full of flapjacks, McCree returned to his bed in Angela's little makeshift hospital and finally called Yaeko. His phone had been destroyed by water damage, and he would never have had the nerve to use it again anyway thanks to Sombra, but Genji was glad to let him borrow his phone. He feared that Genji would sit beside him for the duration of the call, and he did not think that he could say the things that he needed to with Genji beside him, but thankfully his friend volunteered to give him privacy and left him alone with the phone. He estimated it was some time in the early evening over there, and he kind of half-hoped that she would be busy running her ryokan and would not be able to answer. It was not that he didn't want to speak to her. Perhaps a small part of him felt that this call was the closure to their relationship. Hanzo had been saved, so his business with her had been completed, and when they hung up the phone, who knew if they would ever speak to each other again.

" _Moshi moshi, Genji-kun!_ " 

"Uh... hullo?"

"Jesse!" The woman burst into a frenzy of Japanese, and he could tell that, just as he had guessed she would, she was crying. He sat in silence, letting her get it all out, holding the phone about an inch away from his ear because her tone was so shrill and enthusiastic. After a handful of seconds, she switched over into her slower and softer English, "Jesse! Hanzo-kun told me that you got shot!"

"I'm doin' okay, ma'am. Just gotta take it easy for a while," he said. 

"Then you must come here," she said, and her tone made him feel like a child being scolded, "Our water is good for wounds, muscle and joint pain, and weak constitutions. Did you not read our flyers, Jesse? A bath at our onsen will do your body wonders."

He laughed, "I'll have to ask my doctor, ma'am!"

"No more _ma'am._ You must call me _obachan_ now," she said, "And what does a doctor know? Nothing! This onsen has helped people since long before medical schools existed."

"I'm sure it has, m - _obachan,_ " McCree thought the word sounded ridiculous in his own southern drawl, "But I gotta make sure it's okay for me to travel, since I had a pretty bad concussion n' all."

She clicked her tongue into the phone, "Come to Beppu, and I will make you better. Tell Genji-kun to buy you a first class ticket, because he owes me for pretending to be dead for ten years. Hanzo-kun has shared half of his inheritance with Genji-kun, so he can afford it now."

McCree couldn't help but chuckle, but her words actually shocked him, too. What would someone like Genji do with such a tremendous inheritance? Genji had told him how he had lived for years in a monastery with no material possessions, and now suddenly he had what was undoubtedly a fortune to his name. Maybe, after all he'd been through for this family, Genji owed him that ticket after all. "I'll ask him," he promised her, "and I'll ask my doctor, too."

"I don't know why you listen to her and not me, but okay. You go ask now."

"Yes, m - obachan."

She took a long, deep breath, and McCree braced himself; he could tell that she was about to say something more serious. "I can never thank you enough, Jesse. I thought that nothing remained of my family. I thought I would die alone. It is so good to see the boys' faces again."

"Please," McCree said, "I don't want your thanks. I don't deserve it."

She ignored him, "And, please, never forget that you are family, too, now. I could not have picked a better match for my nephew's oldest son. Hanzo was always a cold child, and it took you, with all your warmth, to melt through that ice around his heart. It would be my honor if you would allow me to plan your wedding."

McCree coughed violently into the phone, having choked on a mouthful of his own spit. "Ma'am! Obachan! We have only known each other a week! We ain't even datin'! There is no way me n' Hanzo could get married!"

"None of that matters," she told him, "You are soulmates. Do you think that Hanzo would like to hold the ceremony at Shimada Castle? The whole place has fallen into disrepair. I think it is hardly suitable, but I could try to have contractors out to look - "

"Obachan, I really - "

"I've always thought that the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura or the Heian Shrine in Kyoto would make for a beautiful wedding. They are two very popular venues. You should research them. Or the Itsukushima Shrine, perhaps? The three of us will look at pictures."

" _Please_ , Yaeko," McCree interrupted her again, "We are _not_ gettin' married."

"Not yet," she agreed, "But this year is a leap year. It would be very auspicious to get married before the year is over. What year were you born? Hanzo is a dragon. Are you a dragon, too? It is not a perfect match. Too stubborn and argumentative. But the _kami-sama_ know best. We will find a good date."

"You ain't listenin' to me."

"No, I am listening," she said, "but you are wrong. It is okay. You know, when I was a girl, two men could not marry each other in Japan. I am so happy times have changed. You will see - soon enough, we will all settle on the details together."

McCree felt like his head was spinning as Yaeko continued on and on - or maybe that was the concussion? 


	20. Curses and Blessings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is - THE LAST CHAPTER. 
> 
> Thanks to all of you for every comment and kudo on this. Each one means THE WHOLE FREAKIN WORLD to me ; 3 ; 
> 
> I have been really thinking about writing a sequel to this fic. It would be a mostly slice of life, domestic, fluffy kind of thing, probably with no real plot. I'm really interested in hearing if you all would be interested in that (and if you have suggestions?) or if you think this ending is a perfect sweet spot of closure to this mess. Like the story of the curse itself has been told and is over, so I didn't want to keep this going forever, but I feel like in some ways McCree and Hanzo's story is just kinda beginning? Idk if this is a start or a finish for them lol
> 
> I also wanted to say that I plan to participate in a mini kinktober thing, so don't be alarmed if for a month Im not uploading anything you want to read LOL in November I'll be back to my usual stuff

Yaeko looked resplendent in a dark brown yukata with a silver and gold silk obi, her hair done up in a tight bun kept in place by a hairpin shaped like a lily. She rushed forward across the ryokan entrance to welcome McCree with a hug; even standing in the recessed entryway, he was almost a head taller than her. Through all the fabric, her skinny limbs squeezed him with surprising strength. "I'm so glad that you came back," she told him, her round face lighting up with joy that brought some color and youth to her features, "I'm so happy to see you in one piece. Look at the bruise on your poor forehead!"

After he had tugged off his boots and stepped up into a pair of guest slippers, he said, "I'm glad to be back, too, obachan." 

She raised her fingers to the green and purple flesh on his brow, but she had the sense not to actually touch it. McCree was relieved; as long as nothing put pressure on his forehead, the pain was pretty manageable. His side hurt a hell of a lot worse, especially after dragging his suitcase around the Narita Airport. As thrilled as he was to see her, what he really wanted now was just to take a shower and get some sleep. It seemed that Yaeko had other plans for him, though. Behind her stood a dozen members of the ryokan staff; most of them were women wearing identical yukata in a dusty orange, with a bamboo motif in gold and white rising up the hems, but the kitchen staff was more diverse and dressed in more Western-typical white uniforms. Together, they all greeted the dumbfounded visitor in unison with low bows as Yaeko introduced him to them in Japanese. McCree stood there, feeling like a circus act on display, until Yaeko had finished her speech. Then she turned back to him and said in English, "I've told them they are to treat you as they would Hanzo or Genji. You will be completely at home here!"

He grinned at them all and gave a lame wave, "Thank you. Uh. _Doumo arigato gozaimasu._ " Genji had taught him that before he left Watchpoint Gibraltar. It hadn't sounded too bad, in his own humble opinion. 

They all parroted back to him: "Thank you." 

"Yuka-chan, Rie-chan, Momoko-chan, and Koji-kun are all very skilled at speaking English, so if you need anything and I'm not available, you should be able to track one of them down at any time," Yaeko said. She introduced him to them all individually. Koji was an Omnic member of her kitchen staff, so McCree figured he'd be easy enough to recognize in a pinch, but the three girls in their identical uniforms with their hair done in identical buns would be hard for him to remember. He studied them perhaps a little more closely than appropriate, so that he could set their faces into his memory - Yuka wore glasses and had a cute mole right above her lip; Momoko was tall and had dark skin and very thick eyebrows; Rie looked like she might be the oldest of the bunch, probably close to his own age, with lighter-colored hair that was nearly auburn. 

"Nice to meet you all," he said.

"Jesse, I'm so sorry, but I have some business to attend to," Yaeko apologized with an excited twinkle in her eyes, "Yuka-chan will show you to your room, and then in thirty minutes you can meet me for dinner in the Southern Banquet Hall. You remember where it is?"

"I sure do, Ma'am."

"Not ma'am. I told you - "

"Obachan."

She nodded and embraced him again. "I will see you soon, okay? Yuka-chan, show McCree to the Hanare Suite. Everyone else, let's get back to work!" 

"Would you like a hand with your bag, McCree-sama?" Koji asked, but McCree snatched his bag up before the Omnic could take it.

"No, sir, but thank you. I got this one. It ain't that full. And please, call me Jesse."

While the others scattered, the young woman named Yuka led him beyond the front desk to a small, cramped elevator. She pressed the up button for him and, once the doors opened, held them so that he could step in first and pull his bag in behind him. Then she scooted into the elevator beside him and pushed the button for the fourth and highest floor. 

As the elevator ascended, McCree wondered if returning here had really been the right choice. There was something sad and lonely about staying here without a mission. How would he spend his days for the duration of his stay? Angela had given him a whole list of things he couldn't do while recovering, and probably the number one thing had been no alcohol at all, at least for one week, which meant that getting sloppy drunk in a bar or karaoke was out of the question. He knew, based on the signs he had seen in the train stations, that there was a big aquarium in the city, as well as a nearby monkey park, but those both seemed too touristy for his taste. Besides, if he really wanted to be around monkeys, all he had to do was follow Winston around back at the Watchpoint. _I am_ not _a monkey,_ he heard Winston grumble in his head, and he couldn't help but smile. It really had been good to see him and the others. Perhaps he would just listen to Angela and rest - take a lot of baths in the hot springs, go meditate in some nearby temples and shrines, and maybe even catch up on a whole lifetime of lost sleep.

The thought of doing those things without Hanzo made him miserable. Worst of all was that Hanzo had left him with no method of communication - no phone to call, no address to visit, no P.O. box to send letters to. Hanzo Shimada had come into his life like a tempest and had destroyed his heart from the inside out. 

The elevator chimed and opened, drawing McCree out of his own head. He followed Yuka down the hall, to the very last door at the end. "Welcome to the Hanare Suite," she announced, "Hanare means _away_ in Japanese, and we call it this because we hope for it to be your home away from home."

The Hanare Suite was one of the most luxurious hotel rooms that McCree had ever had the pleasure of stepping foot inside. He entered into a tatami living area, where a low L-shaped couch was arranged around a wooden table. On the far wall was a flat-screen television and a decorative alcove, which contained a scroll of calligraphy and an arrangement of hydrangeas. The wall to his left was made up of glass panes, although screens could be slid into place for privacy. Through the glass, he could see that he had a private deck and, beyond that, his own natural hot spring bath. At first, he was confused that he could be on the fourth floor and have an outdoor space like that, but then he realized that the back of the ryokan was built into the slope of the mountain, meaning that the lower floors on this side of the building were all below ground-level. On his other side was a narrow corridor, which contained the doors to the closet and the Western-style toilet and shower, and beyond that was the bedroom, which contained a king-sized bed. In here, the far wall was also of glass, and he had a view of the bay which would surely be breathtaking in the hours of sunlight. 

He took all of this in, feeling almost guilty that he was taking such advantage of Yaeko's hospitality. He would have been happy in any old room, especially since she was allowing him to stay for free. This was over the top.

Yuka showed him how to use the air conditioning - which he cranked up - and gave him the WiFi password, which he already knew, but he pretended to be thankful for it anyway. By the time she left him alone, he noticed that he only had fifteen minutes before he was expected for his dinner with Yaeko in the Southern Banquet Hall.

McCree threw off his clothes and hopped into the shower to freshen up, rushing to scrub the filthy feeling of the airplane trip off of his skin. He was eager to jump into the bath outside, but there was no time. He could enjoy that later tonight, if he didn't just pass out in that huge, heavenly-looking bed. Once he'd washed and dressed, he checked the clock again - _ten minutes late_. "Damn!" he swore, forcing his feet into his too-small slippers and rushing out the door. He'd been enjoying the hot shower so much that he'd lost track of time.

As much as he wanted to bolt for the banquet hall, the wooden floors groaned with each step, and he would have made the noise of a rhinoceros stampede, so instead he moved at a brisk walk. When he got there, he flung open the sliding door and shouted his apologies, feeling like a bumbling, clumsy idiot as he fell into the room and tried to pull the door shut behind him. He turned to face her, and his breath caught so hard and so fast in his throat that he wondered if it'd kill him.

Yaeko was not there, nor were any of her staff, and the table was not set with a feast like last time. Instead, Hanzo Shimada himself knelt there in a yukata of dark blue, decorated with a pattern of vicious ogre heads in white and silver. The man was wide-eyed. He looked child-sized, alone in that huge room with his legs folded so neatly beneath him on the tatami. As Hanzo rose to his feet, as graceful as he had been in his dragon form, McCree tried to ignore the wave of nausea in his gut, but it stole all of his strength. The last thing he wanted to do was vomit in front of Hanzo. There were no chairs in the room, and even the walls did not look strong enough to lean against, so he fell to his knees as the room spun around him. 

"H-Hanzo?"

"Jesse? What are you doing here?" Hanzo asked. 

"Where's Yaeko?" McCree said at the same time.

They stared at each other across the room. The silence seemed to throb in their ears. Finally, Hanzo broke eye contact to roll his eyes, ending the moment of heavy tension. "Let me guess, my meddling great aunt invited you here?" Hanzo sighed.

He moved across the room to kneel in front of McCree, who gave a few weak chuckles and stared down at the snarling face of an ogre looking up it him from Hanzo's lap. "She told me to meet her in this room for dinner tonight. I didn't know you'd be here, I swear. I ain't tryin' to drag you back or nothin' and - "

"Shh," Hanzo silenced him, his tone surprising in its tenderness, and he reached to place a hand on McCree's knee, "You don't have to explain yourself. I trust you. I know that the old lunatic is trying to play matchmaker."

Once the initial shock had passed, so did the sickening feeling in McCree's stomach. He took a few deep, long breaths and met Hanzo's gaze again. "I ain't gona lie, though, Hanzo. You sure are a sight for sore eyes."

"I cannot believe that Yaeko was so careless to drag you out here, and you should have known better yourself. You were not yet well enough to make the trip back." His features transformed into a look cruel enough to even put the ogres on his yukata in their place. He looked downright murderous.

"I'm fine, Hanzo. Angela said it was okay. She thinks some rest will be good for me," McCree explained. 

"Well then your doctor is careless, too. "

"I reckon she knows better than you do," McCree said, bristling, feeling a little defensive, "C'mon Hanzo. Ain't you the least bit happy to see me?"

"Don't be such a fool!" Hanzo growled.

He lurched forward. There was a fraction of a second where McCree was certain that Hanzo was about to strike him. He winced, bracing himself for the impact, but then Hanzo's arms were around him, and he was pulling McCree half-into his lap, holding him like he never wanted to let go. McCree stiffened against him, the gesture taking him off-guard, but when his brain and his heart caught up with each other, he returned the embrace, gripping Hanzo fierce and tight as he pushed his face into the man's hair. McCree closed his eyes, breathing him in, relishing every instant of this. Even if he was forced to pack up his bags and return back to Gibraltar right now, the whole trip was worth it for this single hug.

"Can I kiss you?" McCree breathed into Hanzo's ear, a question that was almost inaudible, softer than a whisper. 

Time held frozen in that room for the heartbeats while he awaited Hanzo's answer. If he said no, McCree told himself, that would be okay. He would ask again and again if he had to, until the man said yes. He felt Hanzo's head move, and it took him another few heartbeats to realize that he had nodded. 

McCree tore away from him just far enough to see his face. He wasn't sure what he expected to see in the man's expression, but he looked as serious and haughty as ever, even as McCree grabbed his cheeks in both hands and closed the distance between them. There was nothing reluctant or uncertain about the drag and pull of Hanzo's lips against his own. Every sweep of their tongues together was hot and intense and unfaltering. _Yes_ , McCree thought, _yes! Yes! Yes!_ As much as he wanted this to go on forever, he could not control his own spreading grin. Hanzo broke away to chase the stretching corners of his lips with small, chaste kisses, each one of which seemed to repair all the breaks in McCree's heart. 

They remained there - McCree half-straddling Hanzo's lap and Hanzo's fingers tangled in McCree's scruffy hair - for quite a while, just staring at each other, breathing hard and smiling. Then McCree broke the electric quiet of the room, "Well I'll be damned, Hanzo. Is there anythin' in the world you ain't good at?" 

"No," Hanzo answered, and even though his tone was deadpan, McCree could see the sparkle of laughter in his dark, warm eyes. 

_Oh,_ McCree thought, dumbstruck. Where had the coldness in those eyes gone? He didn't miss it at all. 

"Since that good-for-nothing woman tricked us into this and denied us a meal, let's go get dinner somewhere," Hanzo suggested. 

"You sure?" McCree said, "We'll be playin' right into her game."

"I am sure," Hanzo replied, pushing McCree backwards off of him, "I know a place nearby with fantastic sushi."

McCree got up to his feet and extended a hand to help Hanzo off the floor. "As great as that sounds, Hanzo, I got jet-lag from hell. I want somethin' greasy and bad for me."

"Dr. Ziegler would kill me," Hanzo said, adjusting his ruffled yukata back into place, "But what about tempura?"

"Much better," McCree agreed, "I gotta go get my wallet."

"And I will have to change clothes."

Hanzo led the way out into the hall and McCree fell into place beside him. He wanted to reach down for Hanzo's hand, but he figured he better not press his luck. That kiss was good enough to hold him over. "Yer breakin' my heart, Hanzo. I don't want you to change. I like your fancy outfit."

Hanzo scowled. 

They ascended the steps together, side-by-side. It still amazed McCree that Hanzo was there - not a dragon, but a human in the same stairway, close enough to touch. He loved that Hanzo was shorter than him. He couldn't stop admiring his straight posture and the way he kept his chin up so high. McCree wanted to spend the rest of his life just staring at him, until he knew every part of him by memory. There wasn't a single feature he could imagine growing tired of looking at.

When they reached the Hanare Suite, McCree opened the door. His bag was still discarded in the floor, right where he had left it, and he crouched to fish his wallet out of the pocket. He noticed in his peripheral vision that Hanzo was hovering in the doorway, and he turned to look up at Hanzo, ready to flash him a smile and make some clever comment before Hanzo's expression shut him up. He looked _irritated_ , and McCree couldn't imagine what had ruined his mood so suddenly.

"Uh, Hanzo, you okay?" he asked. 

"Jesse, this is _my_ room."

McCree howled with laughter, and Hanzo stood there with his arms crossed, waiting for him to finish. "This is why Genji always liked Yaeko more than I did. Neither of those two can ever mind their own business."

Once he had contained himself, McCree wiped moisture from his eyes and said, "I can ask to move to another room. It's fine."

Hanzo shook his head and moved in to pull a change of clothes from out of the closet. "Don't bother. I'm sure that she will have some excuse to keep you in here. She will not let you move."

"I'll figure it out," McCree said, "If she tries to put up a fight, I'll go stay at a hotel up the road. I bet if I threaten that, another room'll magically open up for me."

Hanzo pursed his lips and moved to step into the bathroom to change in privacy, but he hesitated with his hand on the door. "No. Do not worry about it. We've slept together in the same room already. I see no reason to take issue with it now, after you have seen me at my worse."

"You sure, Hanzo?" McCree asked, "I think I snore."

"I _know_ you snore." 

"Okay, but Hanzo..." McCree gestured with a wave of his hand over at the bedroom, "There's only one bed."

"Yes, Jesse. I can see that. Do you have a problem?"

McCree smiled. "No, Sugar. I don't got a problem with that at all."

**Author's Note:**

> Title translates to "Dragon's Curse" - but I didn't want to have another fic with Dragon in the title LOL I am bad with titles, y'all. It's a struggle. 
> 
> Thank you for all kudos and comments, I will try to respond to each of them. You have all been so supportive and wonderful to me. If you'd like to hang out with my small group of lovely readers-turned-pals or just wana make requests/suggestions, feel free to pop into my discord channel. https://discord.gg/whwyNgt


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